


Relatively Normal

by platform13



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Alternate Universe - Relativity Falls, Canonical Child Abuse, Gen, Grauntie Mabel, Grunkle Dipper - Freeform, Young Stan Twins, except no one gets stuck in the portal
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-29
Updated: 2019-11-12
Packaged: 2020-05-28 18:25:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 46,805
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19399840
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/platform13/pseuds/platform13
Summary: Stanley and Stanford Pines had a lot of plans for their summer break.  Getting unceremoniously shipped across the country to go stay with the eccentric Aunt and Uncle they didn't know they had was not one of them, but they've worked with worse.





	1. WELCOME TO GRAVITY FALLS

Stanford stayed pressed up to the plane window for at least a half hour after take-off. Stanley, who was feeling a little bit nauseous every time he glanced out at the clouds, kept his eyes on the screen at his seat.

Neither of them had been on an airplane before. Neither of them had been expecting to be on this one now. But apparently, their relatives had been willing to shell out the cost of two tickets.

Their summer had gotten off to an…unusual start this year. About a week in, they had gotten home from the beach and were about to rush upstairs to sort through what they'd found. Instead, Pa had called them into the shop as soon as he heard them approach the door.

Pa had looked even grumpier than usual, but he wasn’t yelling yet. He had paced back and forth, hands behind his back, as Stanley went through everything he’d done that Pa might have found out about. Had someone seen him pickpocketing one of Crampelter’s cronies yesterday, or had he found the pieces of the bowl he’d broken this morning? Or maybe-

Suddenly, Pa stopped pacing and turned to face them.

“Get your things packed,” he said. “You two are spending the summer with my Aunt and Uncle.”

The shop bell had rung before either of them had a chance to process this

“Pa has an Aunt and Uncle?” Stanley whispered to Stanford.

He got a slightly frantic shrug in response. The only family either of them had ever heard of on the Pines side were their grandparents, and they had both died farther back than they could remember.

The customer, who had seemed to be feeling the tension in the room, bought a buffalo nickel and left. Pa had started counting what was in the register, apparently not too interested in continuing their conversation.

Stanly nudged Stanford.

“Where do they live?” Stanford’s voice came out a little higher pitched than usual.

“Oregon,” Pa answered, without taking his eyes off the cash.

“What!?” Stanley yelped. He could practically feel their plans for the summer slipping away.

Pa did look at them now. He didn’t say anything, but even from behind the sunglasses his gaze made Stanley back up a step. He didn’t seem up to arguing.

They’d had about a day to pack. Pa didn’t say anything more to them than usual at that point, and neither of them was brave enough to go ask him anything. He was hardly saying anything at all – even to Mom. He had that look on his face that the boys had learned meant it was best to stay out of his way.

Mom had been a little more willing to talk.

“They’re your Grandpa’s kid brother and sister. Mabel and…Mark Pines? Matthew? No, Mason. Your great-aunt always called him something else. You met them once when you were babies. Your old man just doesn’t like to bring them up because they got into it with him over something the last time they were here.”

“What are they like?” Stanford asked.

“They’re a little kooky,” Mom had said, “but they’re decent enough. Your uncle got a cabin out in this dinky little town in the woods and Mabel moved in with him a while back. She runs a shop out of the place I think.”

Neither of them was really sure if ‘a little kooky’ was a good thing or a bad thing. Pa had once said that about Mom’s aunt, who had started asking them the same questions at least five times per conversation and couldn’t remember who’s kids they were as she had started getting older.

They’d had about a day to pack before Pa dropped them off at the airport. They’d been intimidated at first by the massive building, but since their relatives had registered the not-quite-12-year-olds as “unaccompanied minors” they’d been passed between staff since they’d checked in.

The flight attendants seemed to be checking in with them more than the others on the plane. They were on the move now, coming down the aisles to collect the trays.

“Are you boys done eating?” one of them - a pretty lady with long black hair - asked them. They started to pass back their dishes.

The woman jumped a little when she saw the hand that Stanford had wrapped around his tray. Stanley could see her eyes flicking between the fingers as she counted them until she jerked her eyes away and forced a smile at them.

Sixer shrank back into his seat a bit. He spent the next few minutes staring out the window, a lot less enthusiastic this time.

Stanley went back to poking at his screen. They had video games on it. They weren’t _great_ video games, but he’d take what he could get.

“Do you think Pa told them about me?” Ford asked suddenly.

Stan looked back over at him. He didn’t need to ask what he was talking about. He was staring down at his hands, clenched into fists in his lap.

“Mom said they saw us as babies, right? They’ve gotta know. Besides, they’re supposed to be family. It’s not _that_ weird.”

Ford had been worrying the last couple days. He kept talking about how they were going to be spending the whole summer with these people and that they needed to ‘make a good impression’. Stanley felt like he was working himself up too much over it. He had no doubt that they would like Sixer, at least.

Ford tried to give him a smile. Stan threw his arm around his shoulder and pulled him in close. 

“Trust me, Sixer. This is going to be _our_ summer. It’s our first time out of Jersey! No matter what, we’ll make it work.”

“You really think so?”

“I _know_ so.”

Sixer gave him a smile for real.

Still, now Stanley was feeling a bit worried himself. What if Pa _had_ told his Aunt and Uncle about them. If he did, then Stanley could probably kiss whatever chance he had of making a good first impression goodbye.

As they had been waiting with him for the airline to sort things out, their father had finally broken his silence.

“Neither of them ever had kids,” he had said, so suddenly that they both jumped. “If I were you, I’d try to get on their good side.”

He had been looking mostly at Stanford when he said it.

Stanley kept talking.

“Mom said they live out in the woods, so there’s gotta be _something_ cool to check out there. There’s probably gonna be bears, girls who have never heard of us before, stuff to climb-”

“No Crampelter,” Stanford added. “Numerous varieties of local flora and fauna that I can study in person.”

“That’s the spirit,” said Stan. He had no idea what his brother had said, but at least his mood had improved. 

“And I’m pretty sure that I have a general idea of where Gravity Falls is, but I can’t find it on any maps I’ve checked. That’s a mystery in itself.”

“Yeah!” said Stanley. Then he turned to the nearest passing flight attendant and shouted “Hey Lady! We need more Toffee Peanuts!”

……

The rest of the flight passed mostly without incident. Stanley had gotten fidgety next to him after a while, but since they had somehow ended up lucky enough to have an empty seat next to them on an otherwise crowded plane it had worked out alright.

A woman who worked for the airline met them as they were getting off and led them through the airport to wait for their duffle bags to come down a conveyer belt. Then they were led out to the main exit area, where people were standing around waiting for people to come out.

The boys took one look at the crowd and stopped in their tracks. 

“Is that who you’re meeting?” the airline attendant asked.

The twins glanced at each other.

“…Maybe?” Stan said, eventually.

The big sign reading “PINES” should have been more of a giveaway, but it did not look anything like whatever they had expected someone related to their father to produce. The sign was written in dark blue letters on a base board of neon pink glitter. The empty space around the letters had smiley face stickers all over it. The woman holding it had on a huge grin and bulky purple turtleneck sweater that said “WELCOME TO GRAVITY FALLS” across the front over a long pink skirt. Her grey hair was pinned up with an elaborate clip shaped like a butterfly and she had a necklace and earrings to match. Despite (or maybe because of) the level of sparkle coming off of their Great Aunt, she still managed to look a lot more put-together than her brother. He was leaning back against a pillar in faded, tattered jeans, an unbuttoned blue flannel shirt with a stain on the front and a red shirt underneath, and an old brown cap. At a deeper inspection he had enough of a passing resemblance to Pa that they might not have even needed the sign, but Pa would never have been caught dead in public looking like either of them.

Their escort went over to check. They couldn’t quite hear what they were saying, but they saw the man pulling out some ID before she nodded, apparently satisfied. Hesitantly, Stan and Ford went out to meet them.

“You made it!” Pa’s aunt squealed. The twins jumped at the sound. She started to lunge towards them, but was thankfully stopped by her brother grabbing the back of her sweater.

“We talked about this,” he said. His voice was stern, but he was smiling (and now, it was hard to see anything of Pa in his face). “Let them get settled in first.”

She raised up her hands, closed her eyes, and took a deep breath. “Right,” she muttered, “Get it together, Mabel. One step at a time.”

Stanley was looking a little stunned, so it was up to Stanford to get them properly introduced. How were you supposed to greet family you didn’t know existed three days ago? He settled on putting his bag on the floor and holding out a hand.

“Hello Great-Aunt Mabel,” he said. “I’m Stanford. This is my brother, Stanley.”

Mabel got down on one knee to be closer to eye level with him and took it.

“Whoa, a six-fingered handshake,” she began, and before Ford even got a chance to cringe or pull his hand back she said, “That’s a full finger friendlier than normal!”

Stanford felt his cheeks flush, but wasn’t quite sure how to feel about that. He resisted the urge to shove his fists into his pockets and turned to offer another handshake to Great-Uncle Mason. 

This one was almost worse. The man clearly hesitated, staring at his outstretched hand for a moment before staring him in the eyes for a few more. 

He reached out and shook Ford’s hand.

“Don’t call me ‘Great-Aunt Mabel’ though,” Mabel was saying, “That sounds way to stuffy.”

“What are we supposed to call you then?” Stanley finally managed to jump into the conversation.

She seemed to think for a minute.

“Don’t say ‘Grauntie’,” said Mason, at the exact moment that she shouted, “Grauntie Mabel!”

There was a moment of silence.

“Well, okay, I guess that’s a thing we’re going with,” said her brother. “Now let’s get out of this airport.”

Ford reached to pick up his bag again, but ‘Grauntie Mabel’ beat him to it and lifted it up herself. At the same time, Mason was taking Stan’s bag from him and slinging it over his shoulder. Then the two of them started to head out towards the doors.

“Did they just steal our stuff?” Stanley hissed to him.

He relaxed when they stopped halfway and looked back at them, clearly waiting for the boys to follow. They hurried to catch up.

They found themselves led out through the parking lot to an old blue station wagon. Mason opened the trunk with one hand and they put the duffle bags in the back.

“That’s your car?” said Stanley, “It looks like a piece of junk.”

Stanford winced, but thankfully they didn’t seem offended.

Mason patted the hood. “Hey, I know it doesn’t look like much, but its still got some surprises.”

“Like catching on fire?” Stanley asked. He seemed genuinely intrigued at the prospect.

“Hopefully not. Alright, get in and buckle up.”

Stanford had to admit, the car did run a lot more smoothly than he had expected. They were still moving slower than most of the other cars on the road though. Mason seemed to be a cautious driver – not pulling out until he was sure they all had their seatbelts on, double checking at all the turns, and actually slowing down when the lights turned yellow. Other drivers in Jersey wouldn’t have tolerated it, but fortunately the roads were quiet enough here.

“Um...Great-Uncle Mason?” He said quietly, desperately hoping that Mom had remembered the right name.

“Dipper.”

“What?”

He turned back to look at them as the car pulled up to a red light. This close, Stanford could see the dark circles under his eyes – like he hadn’t slept much. “Mason’s my name, but I go by Dipper with most people. I only really use Mason for official stuff.”

“ _Grunkle_ Dipper!” Grauntie Mabel exclaimed.

The man laughed. “Sure, why not? Grunkle Dipper. So, what were you going to ask?”

It took Ford a few seconds to recover from being told to call this man _Grunkle Dipper_. “Where are we headed now? I thought that Gravity falls was due east from the airport.”

Of course Sixer memorized the map, thought Stanley. Nerd.

The light turned green. Grunkle Dipper turned away from them when his sister poked him and they started moving again.

“It would be about an hour drive home from here. I don’t know about you two, but _we’re_ hungry.”

……

They ended up stopping at a café that ready-made sandwiches and some pastries. Dipper and Mabel even let them get brownies (and they didn’t have to split it, either. Maybe they had somehow ended up as the ‘doting granny’ type of old people despite being Pines).

They were willing to chat a bit too, and by the time they had eaten and reached their house Stanford had gained both a greater understanding of Gravity Falls’ topography and the pleasant surprise of finding a family member that knew what ‘topography’ meant.

Finally, they started to turn down a dirt road.

“We’ll try to get out to show you the town sometime over the next couple days,” Dipper told them, “It’s on the other side of the woods from here, and it’s getting a little late now.”

They pulled up to a wooden building with a sharply sloped roof. The main entrance had a sign that read “The Crafter’s Cottage” hanging over it. They found themselves being led to a side door that opened into an area with pale green bird-and-plant silhouetted wallpaper, a door to a nice-looking but a bit messy kitchen, and a staircase.

“Okay, now let’s go see your room,” said Grauntie Mabel, who started ushering everyone up the stairs. They went through a wooden hall – Grunkle Dipper hurriedly pointing out the bathroom as they were rushed past – and came to a stop in front of a half open door.

With a slight flourish, Mabel flung it the rest of the way open.

There was an odd moment where Stanford’s brain tried to convince him that his eyes were lying to him. Because there was a pig in there, and _why would there possibly be a pig in there?_

It had been lying in the middle of the floor when they had opened the door, and it stood up when it saw them. The twins, who had grown up in the city and had never seen a pig outside of TV before, stayed frozen in the doorway. It had never occurred to either of them that pigs could be so _big_ in person.

Grauntie Mabel walked over and smooshed the pigs cheeks between her hands. It stood almost up to her chest and was almost as long as she was tall, and it nuzzled into her stomach in response.

“Waddles, you rapscallion,” she cooed. “Were you getting into trouble while we were gone?”

The pig gave a soft squeal back at her.

“They’re here!” Mabel turned in their direction and gestured at them with a grand sweep of her hand. “Waddles, meet Stanley and Stanford Pines.”

This somehow felt formal enough that Stanford found himself fighting a sudden, insane instinct to try to shake the pig’s hand too.

Waddles trotted closer. Stanford felt its breath ruffle his hair as it snuffled at him before moving on to do the same to Stanley. It turned back to look at Mabel and squealed again.

She laughed. “Yeah. Alright, let’s go get you some dinner. I saved you a sandwich.”

She patted its snout, gave the boys a wave, and left the room. The massive pig trotted after her like a puppy.

The twins turned to stare at Dipper.

“He’s Mabel’s,” he said, as if that explained everything. “He was small enough to carry around when she got him, but then he just kept growing. He’s pretty friendly though. Just…close your door if you don’t want him in here.”

The boys didn’t say anything.

He stared back at them. It might have been Stanford’s imagination, but it looked like he was starting to sweat a bit.

“Well.” Grunkle Dipper said abruptly, “I’ll let you get unpacked. Call if you need anything.”

He then proceeded to leave the room before either of them had a chance to answer.

“That was a pig,” said Stanley.

Now that the room was pig-free, they were able to properly take it in. It actually looked a lot nicer than anything he had expected when he realized they were heading to an attic bedroom. Really, it looked nicer than their room at home. The wooden ceiling sloped up to a steep point in the middle, framing a round window at the back with a view of the forest. Two beds with quilts and bedside tables sat on either end. There were two desks with shelf space above for books (and Stanley was opening the drawers to find them full of paper, writing utensils, and more art supplies than either of them had seen in one place outside of a store before). The other end of the room had a closet on one side and an open area that ran to the other end of the house sectioned off with a starry blue curtain. They looked behind it to find a dresser and some crates. 

Of course, there were also stickers on most of the furniture in the room and several of the beams. They were surrounded by googly-eyed animals, even more glitter, and nauseatingly cheerful and encouraging messages.

“Dibs on this one!” Stanley called as he rushed to the bed on the right. He dove face first onto the quilt and just stayed there.

Stanford set his bag down on the other bed, keeping his eye on the sparkling “U R A STAR!” sticker on the headboard. 

They were starting to understand what Mom had meant by ‘kooky’

……

_OHW’V WUB WKLV DJDLQ, VKDOO ZH?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi everyone. It's me - 6 years late with a Gravity Falls fanfiction. 
> 
> This story is based on the "Relativity Falls AU", which is basically a generational swap between the twins. A lot of elements from the story are going to be based on that (and therefore, are not things that I can take sole credit for), but there are also areas where I'm changing things. This story will loosely follow the show, but it is not quite a full role swap as this AU often seems to be. The key differences between the two sets of twins was a big element in the show, and I want to reflect that.
> 
> Thanks for reading!
> 
> -platform13
> 
> PS: sorry if there are any formatting issues. this is my first time posting to AO3


	2. 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Stans find a not-quite familiar book.

The Crafter's Cottage was a bit of an unusual store.

It seemed to specialize in selling handmade art projects. About half of the goods had been created by Mabel Pines, owner and manager. She produced mainly knitted items, such as the sweaters that inexplicably still lined the racks in July and even more inexplicably continued to be purchased in July, to metalwork, paintings, homemade scented stickers, buttons and more. The rest came from local artists. This sounded great in theory, but unfortunately quality and the definition of "art" were defined a little loosely in this case. Some things were actually decently made, but they also had things for sale like lumps of glued together twigs and animal fur sculptures that took no recognizable shape that the boys had ever seen. The shop stayed open for the warmer months and closed during the winter, which was when Mabel made the bulk of her merchandise.

Stanley and Stanford learned about all this from Maria, one of the store's two employees. She was a young woman with a drawling Spanish accent, curly hair, a hooked nose and plump frame. Her voice usually sounded so calm that at first they had assumed she was a laid-back person. That had lasted until a kid spilled a bag of chips. They watched her gently usher the family away from the area and then get on her hands and knees with a handheld vacuum for 10 minutes making sure she had gotten it all.

They weren't quite sure what to make of the other employee. He was a teenager with bright red hair and a frame bigger than most adults. He seemed a bit intense. For some reason, people coming in referred to him as "Boyish Dan". Maria and Mabel just called him Dan.

Maria seemed to do janitorial work and managing the register. Dan did maintenance and inventory.

Maria was nice to the boys, and Dan seemed to at least tolerate them. Neither of them even commented on Stanford’s extra fingers, so they supposed that Grauntie Mabel had warned them ahead of time.

Grunkle Dipper owned the building, but apparently wasn’t really involved in the business besides occasionally lending a hand.

For instance…

“Okay,” said Dipper. “I need someone to go hang these signs up in the woods.” 

I am busy", said Maria. She was at the cash, and appeared to be slowly arranging the change into perfect stacks. Dan, whose head hidden behind the massive box he was carrying to the back room, just grunted. 

Stanford looked a little intrigued. They hadn't gotten a chance to really explore yet, and Stanley knew he was itching to get out. Dipper was probably going to pick-

Stanley", he said, dropping the signs into his arms. "You can give me a hand with this.

"What? " he exclaimed. "Why me?"

"I'm sure I can count on you to help me out," Dipper said, clapping him on the shoulder.

Stanley wasn't quite sure what to say to that. 

Grumbling to himself, he started heading down the path. He wasn't even sure what he was supposed to hang these on. Trees?

Actually, probably trees. Dipper had given him a hammer and nails in his bundle too. At least he kind of knew what to do with a hammer. They had swiped some supplies to fix up the Stan-O-War, so he had already whacked himself in the thumb enough times to know to be careful.

There was a brief period where he considered just dumping the signs and going to do something else. People didn't usually ask him to do stuff like this - for good reason. Then again, Dipper would probably figure out if he didn't do it.

He got about 5 signs up (with cracks, nails stuck out at odd angles, and a banged-up thumb for his troubles) before he got bored.

Come to think of it, he'd never been around trees like this before. The ones in his part of Jersey tended to be a lot scrawnier and spread-out.

It would be a shame not to take advantage of this while he had the chance.

He stuck the hammer into his belt loop on his jeans and piled up the signs on the ground.

a few minutes later he found a tree with a big rock next to it for a foothold and made it up to the top of the branches. The view from up here was mostly more trees, but he could see the top of the Cottage roof.

A mosquito landed on his arm. He took a swipe at it and then had to lunge to grab the branches before he could fall out.

The jolt made the hammer slip out from where he had stuck it. There was a crack below him. Wincing, he climbed down to see what had happened to it.

The hammer was fine. The rock wasn't.

A chunk of the rock had broken off. And not like the way a piece of a rock was supposed to break off either. The outside still felt like roughened stone, but the inside looked like plaster. A piece about the side of his fist had come off, and a crack ran along the length of it.

He processed this for a minute, and then picked up the hammer.

He smashed it. The broken part got bigger. 

"What are you- whoa!"

Stanford had come to see what he was doing.

"What is that?"

"I dunno," said Stanley. Lifting the hammer again. "That's what I'm trying to find out.”

Stanford stopped him mid-swing.

“Turn it around. It’ll work better.”

Stanley turned the hammer to hit with the pointed end and found that Stanford was right. It got stuck in a little bit, but it went much deeper. 

He had to get through about 4 inches of plaster before he could finally split the thing apart. The inside was hollow, but not empty.

Stanford cautiously reached inside, and then blew plaster off of the worn blue book.

There wasn’t much on the cover besides a golden picture – a star with a trail behind it. In the center of the star was the number 3.

Mesmerized, Stanford flipped it open to the first page. The inside of the cover said “Property of” but the rest was torn off.   
“It’s hard to believe it’s been six years since we began studying the strange and wondrous secrets of Gravity Falls, Oregon…” he read.

“What is it?” asked Stanley, peering over his shoulder.

“I’m not sure,” Stanford skimmed through the pages. There were pictures of eyeballs with bat wings, sea monsters, what looked like garden gnomes, ghosts and more. Writing and code covered every page. He lingered on one page with crossed-out text and warnings around the image of a wheel with a top had-wearing illuminati symbol in the center before turning to a page that just had a message scrawled on.

_My worst suspicions have been confirmed. There is no limit to what he will do to get what I have helped him create._

_I am putting this journal in the hands of one of my closest companions – to be hidden where not even I will know where to find it._

_Remember – in Gravity Falls, guard those you trust carefully._

……

It ended up being about an hour before they went back. Stanley had decided to try to hide the broken pieces of the fake rock. Stanford had to admit that that made sense. He didn’t know if someone would still be checking to see if it was missing. Most likely though, they weren’t. The ground under where the rock had been had no remaining trace of grass. It had been sitting there for a while.

Stanford kept looking through the book. This was different than the usual tabloids full of vague cryptid sightings than he had to work with. This came with detailed illustrations and descriptions of the creatures’ traits from, supposedly, a first-hand account. Maybe it would turn out to be fake, but for now, he felt more excited than he had in a while.

Stanley came over. 

“They’re going to wonder what’s taking so long,” he said. Stanford nodded. He quickly helped Stanley put up the rest signs and then they hurried back to the Cottage. 

They slipped through the side entrance as quietly as they could, but apparently not quiet enough for Grauntie Mabel.

“There you two are!” she exclaimed, coming through the kitchen. Stanford barely managed to get the Journal behind his back before she could see it. “I’ve been looking for you two. Dan’s heading into town and we thought we’d see if you wanted to go with him.

“Sure,” said Stanford, trying to end the conversation as quickly as possible, “just let me go grab my bag.”

He shot a meaningful glance at Stanley.

Stanley could recognize a call for a distraction when he saw it. He stepped up closer to her other side and asked, “So Grauntie Mabel, where are we going?”

Stanford quickly switched the book to his front and scurried upstairs with it

“I ordered in some supplies I needed, and he’s going to head down in the golf cart to pick them up.”

Stanford made his way back downstairs with his bag on. He was panting for breath after sprinting up. 

Mabel gave him a questioning look. 

“He’s just…really excited to go,” said Stan. 

Stanford had been wondering how they were going to get anything back in the golf cart, but when they got back outside they found that a low flat cart had been attached to the back. Dan was already sitting inside, looking much too large for such a tiny car. 

The boys squeezed in with him. 

Dan didn’t seem to have much to say, so it was a mostly silent ride. Stanford was practically twitching to get back to the Journal but he didn’t feel safe pulling it out with anyone but Stanley there.

Soon the town came into sight. By Jersey standards, their mom’s description of Gravity Falls as “a dinky little town in the woods” didn’t seem too far off. Then again, but Jersey standards there didn’t seem to be a lot of dead rats, either. They pulled into a post office on the outskirts.

Dan climbed out of the cart first. The weight of the whole thing shifted.

A figure wearing a black hoodie staggered into him as he stood. 

“Watch it!” said Dan. The other guy just grunted and kept going. Probably drunk.

Dan was glowering at him. 

“You two come this way,” he told them, leading them towards the building and away from the stranger. They stood in the doorway while Dan went up to the main desk

Stanley nudged him.

“Hey,” he said, gesturing to Black Hoodie, who was now trying to maneuver through the parking lot, “you think there’s a page about that guy in your book?”

Stanford laughed.

Then the guy swung his hand a bit to far and hit it against a car. The hand fell off.

The two of them watched, wide-eyed, as he picked it up, took a quick look around the parking lot, and stuck it back on.

“You know what? I think there just might be.”

He pulled out the journal. Something about that guy seemed familiar.

“What do you think?” he asked. Stanley leaned in to get a better look. 

Then he smirked.

“I think we’ve got ourselves a zombie.”

Dan came out carrying a stack of boxes. 

“I could use a hand getting this on the cart,” he told them.

Stanley went out with him. Stanford stayed where he was. This could be their first big investigation in Gravity falls, and he didn’t want to miss it. 

After watching for a few minutes, he realized that the zombie was watching someone too. A girl about his age with a white flower in her dark hair was out in front of the shop across the street. The zombie was watching her intently. Very intently. 

Actually, Stanford was getting a bit uncomfortable from how intently he was watching her. Even if he wasn’t a zombie he should still maybe tell someone. 

A woman with the same dark hair was stepping out of the store, and the girl left with her. His target watched her go, and then turned to walk back in the direction he had come from.

Stanford glanced back. They were about to lose him, and Stanley was too caught up in helping Dan to get over and help him.

It wouldn't hurt just to know where he was going, he reasoned. He could follow for a minute and leave if he seemed to be getting too far away.

He managed to sneak away from the yard without anyone noticing him. The probably-zombie shambled away, smacking his head on a low hanging tree branch in the process.

Stanford had been planning to see him go out of sight quickly, but he was actually moving at a pretty easy pace. He kept following. The zombie seemed to know exactly where he was going as he moved deeper into the woods, and Stanford was getting more and more curious about where that was.

Stanford found himself following him off the path. All of the sudden, he was stepping through a clump of trees, and his target was gone.

He looked around for a minute, but there was no sign of him. He blinked and realized that he had followed him for a lot farther than he had expected. The clearing with Stanley and Dan was nowhere in sight. He’d have to get his bearings again before he-

“Looking for something?” a gravelly voiced asked from behind him.

Stanford spun around. The zombie was stepping out from behind the trees.

He reached for the zipper of his hoodie.

……

Helping Dan mostly meant just arranging the boxes when he put them on the cart. He moved one, and the weight of it made him feel instantly impressed. Dan was carrying about 5 at a time. It took Stanley a couple minutes to realize that Stanford was gone. He glanced over when he had finished sliding a box into place and saw that there wasn’t anyone by the front of the building. He slipped off to go look around for a minute and couldn’t find him inside the building or out. 

Maybe it was fine. Maybe he just went for a walk or something. But the weirdo he’d been watching was gone too, and something about this didn’t sit right with him. 

If they’d gotten a head start, then he was going to need to figure out how to catch up fast.

Stan peeked up at Dan. He still seemed wrapped up in his heavy lifting. The keychain for the cart was dangling slightly out of his pocket. Maybe...

Stanley edged closer. 

It turned out that Dan was an easier mark than anyone back in Jersey had been. Silently resolving to test out whether this was the case for all small-town residents, Stanley slipped back over to the cart with the keys in hand and silently unhooked it.

Of course, the sound of the engine roaring to life alerted Dan, but Stanley was already moving before he could do anything about it besides an indignant, shouted, "Hey, get back here!" as he peeled away. He was probably going to be upset later, but that wasn't Stan's priority now.

Stanley could usually work through not wearing his glasses, but even he had to admit that it might have been helpful to have them as he strained to find any trace of where Sixer had gone as he swerved around the trees. He decided to stick to the path, and sure enough he soon spotted a familiar backpack lying in the dirt. He screeched to a halt, managing to only slightly clip a trunk.

Real panic was starting to set in now. He could feel from the weight that that book they’d found was in there, and he couldn’t imagine Sixer leaving it behind on purpose.

But where had he gone?

He looked around for any sort of clue. The dirt on the path had been disturbed. There was a long drag mark going through it, headed off to the left. Farther down that way he could see that a lot of the smaller plants had been broken. 

It looked like he was going to have to go off road.

He ran back to the golf cart, tossed the backpack on the passenger's seat, and headed in that direction, it was a bumpy ride, and every now and then he could hear the sound of paint scraping off the sides.

It was really a miracle that he could hear the yelling at all. Then again, one of those voices was Stanford, and he would know that anywhere. 

Up ahead was a path intersecting the way that he was headed with a steep drop on the other side. It was coming from there. He drove straight down into an area filled with moss, colorful rocks, and weird looking trees. What caught his attention however was the crowd of lawn ornaments that had his brother pinned to the ground.

Stanley had absolutely no idea what was going on here, but it didn't look like he had time to find out. So he went with his first instinct:

Driving directly through the nearest bunch of them.

He dimly heard Stanford shout his name.

Gnomes were flying everywhere. Fortunately (or maybe unfortunately) there didn't seem to be any casualties. Most of the others went scurrying back. Stanford got loose in the ensuing chaos and managed to run over to him.

"What the heck is going on?!" Stanley yelled as he climbed into the passenger seat.

"I'll tell you later," Sixer yelled back. "Just drive!"

They went pelting back out. Angry screeches came from behind them as they swerved back up to the path and headed down it until it was quiet.

They came to an abrupt stop as Stanley hit the brakes. He turned to stare at his brother, at an absolute loss for words.

“They were the zombie,” Stanford explained. “Well, they weren’t actually a zombie – my assessment was off on that one. But they were all standing on each other’s shoulders under the sweater. Actually, I wonder how they managed to maneuver so effectively when-”

“Get on with it, Poindexter.”

“Right, sorry. So the leader, Mitch – he was the face – told me that they were trying to find a queen, but since I had found out about them they couldn’t let me go because they didn’t want me telling anyone. I guess you know now too. Do you think they’ll come after us again?”

Stanley punched him in the arm. “I wouldn’t be too worried about that, Buddy. Did you _see_ them? They’re shrimps.”

Stanford gave a nervous laugh. 

Then he pulled out the journal and turned to the Gnome section again. He stared at the book reverently.

“It’s all real,” he whispered.

There was a boom behind them.

A giant figure was stepping between the trees. A giant figure with a pointy hat. A giant figure made up of –

Stanley hit the gas.

“Okay,” he shouted. “This is a thing that’s happening! What does your nerd book say?!”

Stanford was skimming through the page. “Tiny men of the Gravity Falls forest,” he read, “Highly dependent on hierarchy and will search for females of other humanoid species to become their Queen…Okay, good, weaknesses _– leaf blowers_!? _What does that even mean!?_ ”

He screamed as one of the gnomes dropped down at him. Stanley punched it away. The cart gave another wild swerve.

“Leaf blower? Do we have one of those?”

“At the Cottage, I think, but-”

Stanley jerked on the wheel.

“Not that way!” Stanford yelled. He tried to grab the wheel himself to turn them in the right direction.

Then of course the cart tipped over. Really, it was a miracle that it hadn’t happened sooner.

The two of them crawled out of the overturned cart. Stanley had felt a sharp pain in his elbow when they fell, and Stanford didn’t know where his glasses had gone, but neither of them seemed to bad off otherwise.

Stanley grabbed at the side of the cart, trying to get it back upright so they could get moving again.

“Look out!”

Stanford pulled him away just as the Gnomes took a swipe in their direction and knocked the cart flying. 

They heard the cart crunch against a tree.

In the few seconds that it took for the gnomes to scurry back into formation after the attack Stanley had grabbed Stanford’s arm and got them running.

“We..we’re pretty close,” Stanford panted. “Just keep going.”

The crashing sounds behind them turned out to be a pretty good motivator, and soon the Cottage was in sight.

Stanford reached his limit once they had just made it into the yard, falling forward and knocking tripping Stanley too.

They twisted around, struggling to find the energy to get back up again. One of the massive arms came swinging down...

And then fell apart.

Bewildered and still braced for the blow, the boys tried to figure out what had happened. The gnomes forming the arm had just seemed to collapse. They watched the ones on the ground seem to give themselves a shake before scurrying back to rejoin the group.

The boys got to their feet, braced for another fight. Instead, the Gnometron just stood there. They could see the one that was probably Mitch at the top with his eyes fixed on them. 

Then they saw him nudge some of the gnomes beneath him. The body seemed to ripple like a wave as they started disassembling themselves, disappearing one by one back into the forest.

There was a stunned silence between the two of them as the last gnomes slipped back into the trees.

"I ain't complaining, but what just happened?" asked Stanley.

"I-I don't know," Stanford answered, cautiously stepping forward. "They just...left.

Now that it was quiet, Stanley noticed the stinging in his elbow. He twisted his arm to look and saw a big scuffed up, bloody patch on it. he must have scrapped it when he fell out of the-

"Oh no."

"What?"

""The golf cart," said Stanley.

They started off creeping away from the cottage in case the gnomes were around. They broke into a run as soon as it felt safe.

"Maybe it's not that bad," Stanford called over as they went.

It was that bad.

The whole front of the cart had been dented in. The paint all along the front was scrapped off. One of the headlights was broken, and when Stanford tried turning the key nothing happened.

They had broken an important and probably expensive piece of equipment that belonged to the shop. There was going to be no way to hide it either. They would definitely notice that something like this had gone missing.

"Do you have anything I can bribe or…blackmail Dan with?” Stan asked, “He knows I took it."

Stanford groaned and sat on the ground with his head in his hands.

Something glinted in the corner of his vision.

“On the bright side,” said Stanley, rushing to pick it out from the grass, “I found your- Oh.”

Stanford’s glasses were _mostly_ intact, but one of the lenses had a large crack running down from the top.

Sixer looked at them for a moment, shrank into himself a little tighter, and put them back on.

“I can’t go home _now,_ ” he said, clutching his bag and the Journal inside it to his chest. “I _can’t._ ”

_Get on their good side,_ their father had told them. They had been here for one day and Stanley had already cost them money. They’d probably be back on a plane by tomorrow. Pa was going to be furious.

“How could we tell them it was _gnomes_?” Sixer was saying. “We don’t even have any evidence. They’ll think we’re either crazy or making it up.”

“We’ll think of something.”

But then a voice was calling their names, and they were all out of time to think.

Stanford had scrambled back to his feet and the two of them were standing next to the wreckage when their Great-Uncle found them.

All of the sudden, he realized that Pa wasn't his first problem right now. Pa was a plane-ride-he-wouldn't-pay-for away in Jersey. Dipper was the one he was going to have to deal with, and Stanley had no idea what he was like when he was angry.

“What happened?” Dipper asked.

He had no idea how to read the expression on Dipper's face right now. He didn't quite look upset, but he didn't look pleased either. He didn't pace, he didn't yell. He just stood there, looking straight at them and waiting for their answer.

It occurred to Stanley that he was actually going to have to come up with an answer. This was new. Usually, people just assumed that it was Stanley's fault and they let him know what they thought the story was. Dipper didn't know either of them very well yet, so he probably wasn't sure where to start himself.

In that case, Stanley didn’t mind helping him out.

“So we were helping Dan,” he said, “and these guys came out of nowhere and stole the cart! We tried to catch them, but then…”

Dipper didn’t interrupt, letting Stanley spin his story.

“Interesting,” Dipper said when he was done, “That doesn’t quite explain the phone call we got from Dan though.”

That threw him for a second, but at that point all he could do was just stick to the story.

“He was busy with moving stuff,” Stanley countered, “I’m not sure he really got a good look at what was going on.”

He didn’t seem convinced.

"Tell him, Stanford," he exclaimed, reaching out to grab his brother's arm.

But then he actually took a good look at him.

Stanford was staring at the ground, hands clenched together behind his back. He had the same look on his face that Stanley had seen on the few times that Crampelter had managed to corner him alone. 

I can't go home now, he had said, and Stanley could see now that he meant it.

Dipper was still giving him the same, steady look. He knew he wasn't buying his story. His aunt and uncle were bound to have found out sooner or later that Stanley was trouble, but maybe he could at least get them to give Stanford another chance.

Stanley took a deep breath.

"I was driving it." he said.

Sixer gave him a panicked look, but he kept going. "I wanted to try driving it and I crashed. It's my fault."

"Just you?" asked Dipper. Stanley still couldn't get a read off his face.

"Yeah," he said.

He shifted slightly, and the movement made his scrapped elbow start to sting again. Unconsciously, he reached to cover it with his other hand.

Dipper silently stepped closer.

Stan took a step back. He hadn't noticed it before with Dipper's slouching, but he was _big_. Maybe even taller than Pa. 

Stanford watched, looking terrified as Dipper reached down and took a hold of Stanley's wrist.

Stanley braced himself to be dragged off somewhere. He wasn't. The grip on his arm was firm, but not tight. Slowly, carefully, he felt his arm being raised.

"Got anything else to add?" Asked Grunkle Dipper.

Stanley almost answered before he realized that the man wasn't talking to him. His eyes were drifting from Stan's banged-up elbow over to Stanford. 

Sixer was silent for a few seconds before stammering out an answer.

"He...he was driving," he said, and before Stanley's heart could sink (even though that was what he was _supposed_ to say) he went on, "But i-it wasn't just his fault. He was looking for me. "I..I went for a walk in the forest and I got lost. He borrowed the cart so he could try to find me."

While he was speaking, Dipper started rummaging around in his pocket. He pulled out a little packet of tissues, removed some from the packaging, and pressed them to Stan's elbow.

Stanley hissed a little at the pressure, but it still wasn't too bad.

"Both of you come with me," Grunkle Dipper said. He got Stanley to hold the bloody tissues himself and lead them back to the cottage and into the kitchen. Stanley flinched a little when Dipper reached down for him. He found himself being lifted up under the arms and set down to sit on the tabletop.

"Wait here," Grunkle Dipper said. They could hear him opening the door to the shop and calling Grauntie Mabel. They had a quick, muffled conversation, and then he headed upstairs.

The boys looked at each other, but Stanley wasn't quite sure if getting down was a good idea or not.

Dipper came back a minute later with a red box tucked under his arm and a wet cloth in his hand. He grabbed on to Stanley's arm and looked at his elbow again, peeling off the tissues before carefully cleaning it.

There was silence in the kitchen as he worked, no one speaking until Stanley's elbow was covered with a big rectangular band-aid. 

Dipper gave him a check over – looking at his knees, lifting his arm again, and tilting his head back a bit to examine it. Then he set him back on the ground and turned to Stanford.

“Are you alright?”

This was all so far off of whatever script they had been expecting that Stanford actually jumped a bit. “I’m okay.”

“His glasses are broken,” said Grauntie Mabel, who was leaning against the doorway. Stanley hadn’t even noticed her come in. 

"They're fine," Sixer said quickly. "I can still see out of them.

Their Aunt and Uncle both started at him for a moment.

"Great," Said Grunkle Dipper. "Was your head _inside_ them when they broke? Because we may need to check that out if it was."

Stanford blushed a little.

"No, he said, in a small voice. "I didn't hit my head. They fell off when we crashed."

"Good to know," said Dipper.

He straightened himself up again then. Stanley took a quick step closer to Stanford.

"Okay," Grunkle Dipper began, "here's what we're going to do."

Both boys snapped to attention.

"First, off, neither of you are allowed to drive the golf cart again until we make sure we've taught you how.”

Stanford took in a sharp breath. Stanley felt his eyes widening.

He thought that them not being allowed to drive the golf cart was supposed to be a punishment, but that was the best news they could have gotten at that moment. Whatever else was going to come next, that at least seemed to mean that they weren't being sent home. Not only were they going to get lessons on how to drive the golf cart, but they were going to be _in Gravity Falls_ getting lessons on how to drive the golf cart. 

Stanford," he went on, "you are going to be sticking with Mabel for the rest of the day. "

Sixes still looked a little nervous at that, but still pretty relieved overall.

"What about me?" Stanley asked, not really sure he wanted the answer.

"You're with me. You broke the golf cart, so you can fix it."

……

Thankfully, Dipper didn't leave him to do completely on his own. Stanley was pretty sure that he would have ended up regretting it if he had. Dipper took a look around inside, went and got some replacement parts, passed Stanley some thick gloves and then took a seat on a log bench and started talking him through what to do.

Stanley took one look inside and thought that he would have rather been grounded. The whole inside just looked like a mess of machinery to him. The inside casing was smeared with black goop.

“It’s in rough shape, but luckily all the internal parts that broke are things we can swap out on our own. Do you know what an oil pump looks like?”

“No.”

First he had to wipe down the inside and drain the thing the rest of the way. Then it took him 30 minutes to get the pieces out. Grudgingly, he followed Dipper’s directions and got the new ones in.

“Okay,” Dipper told him, “If you did it right the engine should start now. Give it a try.”

The engine did not start. Then he had to take everything he’d done out and try to get it back in all over again. 

It still didn’t work.

“I hope you’re not counting on me getting all the dents out too,” he muttered mutinously.

“Don’t worry. I have a friend who’s really good with this sort of thing and won’t mind doing it as a favour.”

Stanley turned to give him an indignant, betrayed look.

“Then why didn’t you just get them to do all this!?”

Dipper grinned. 

“What’s the fun in that?”

Stanley would have sucker punched him if he thought he could have gotten away with it.

After his third failed attempt, jumped up to his feet, tore off his gloves and threw them down.

“Stupid piece of junk!” he shouted. To his horror, he felt himself tearing up. He turned himself and took a few steps away so that Dipper couldn’t see.

Why had he even bothered asking Stanley to do this? He should have known that he wouldn’t have been able too. If he had just asked Stanford instead they probably would have been done an hour ago. And he didn’t know why he would want to just sit out here wasting his time-

He heard Dipper get up and walk over to him. 

Stan tensed, bracing himself for a confrontation. 

A pair of hands came to rest gently on his shoulders.

“Take a deep breath,” his voice was soft. On reflex, Stan did as he was told. “You’re a lot closer than you think. Come look at it again with me.”

He kept an arm wrapped around Stanley as he led them back over to the cart. He didn’t say anything about his eyes.

“Everything is basically in the right spot. Just check it over. Do you see anything that’s too loose, or got shifted after you put it together?”

Dipper was absentmindedly rubbing small, light circles on his back with his thumb as he spoke. Stanley felt himself relaxing in spite of himself. 

He put his gloves back on and reached in, feeling around until he felt something wiggle.

He looked back up at Dipper for confirmation. The man smiled at him.

For the first time, Stanley noticed that his eyes were exactly the same shade of brown as him and Stanford’s.

The next time he reached for the key, he was somehow both so worn out and so high strung that his hands shook a little.

The engine sputtered, and then came to life.

A rush came over him like he hadn’t gotten since Pa had seen him win his first boxing match. He jumped to his feet again.

“Yes!” he yelled. “In your face you dumb hunk of metal!”

Dipper stood up too. Stanley turned to him, triumphant, and saw that he was smiling again.

He reached out and ruffled Stanley’s hair.

“Good job,” he said. Then his smile turned into another slightly wicked grin. “Now let’s see what we can do about that axel.”

Somehow, that didn’t seem as bad to Stanley as he would have thought. He stayed there and waited as Dipper went to get more supplies, hand creeping up to touch his hair as he tried to remember if anyone had ever said those words to him before.

……

Grauntie Mabel’s first priority was to get Stanford to an optometrist.

Worried about the bill (and about where she was going to send it), he had initially objected. The crack bothered him a bit, but he could still see fine.

“Don’t be silly,” she told him as she led him to the car. “You’re not spending the whole summer with broken glasses. I know a guy”

She took him to a shop in the smallest mall he had ever seen and went to talk to the man behind the counter. Stanford watched in awe as in a five minute conversation about his family she managed to convince him to rush to get it done in an hour _and_ give them a discount.

There was an area with a couple chairs. Stanford went to have a seat

"I need to go to another store for a minute," Grauntie Mabel said. "It's just across the hall. Do you want to wait here or come?"

"I'll wait here," he answered. He had been wanting a minute to himself anyway.

Once he was alone, Stanford reached into his backpack and pulled out the Journal. He flipped through until he found the gnome page. There had been something he had noticed at the bottom while they were in the golf cart that he hadn't gotten a chance to read properly.

In small handwriting under the picture, the Author had added an extra note.

_I don't think that the Gnomes will be bothering us again after Shooting Star got through with them. Still, I'd rather be safe than sorry. I'll be taking some extra precautions._

There were some symbols he didn't recognize scrawled next to it.

"Shooting Star," he mumbled to himself. He closed the book to look at the cover. The golden star and its trail glinted in the store light.

Grauntie Mabel came back in a few minutes later with two bulging bags of yarn. He quickly shoved the book back into his bag.

……

Stanford was back at the Cottage stocking shelves with his newly repaired glasses by the time Stanley (uncharacteristically quiet and with smears of oil on his shirt) trudged back in with Grunkle Dipper. 

Grauntie Mabel clapped her hands once and held them together under her chin.

“Okay,” she said, “since you two worked so hard today, I think you can get a reward.”

“What kind of reward,” Stanley sounded a little skeptical.

“You can both pick something from the shop! On the house.”

This did not make them any more trusting. In their household, the word “free” usually came with a question mark at the end.

“What’s the catch?” Stanley asked

“No catch.”

His eyes narrowed, but Stanley was never one to pass up free stuff. Stanford went to browse the shelves once he did.

He ended up finding some really nice notebooks. With the book hidden safely up in their room in mind, he picked out a plain red one.

“And I will take…” Stanley said, rooting through a box, “Brass knuckles!”

He slipped them on and held his fist up high.

Grunkle Dipper turned to his sister.

“Why do you sell child-sized brass knuckles?” he deadpanned.

Grauntie Mabel made an ‘I don’t know’ noise and shrugged, still grinning as Stanley turned and punched a shelf.

……

That night, Stanford flipped through the Journal as he lay in bed. Stanley was on his own bed beside him. He was still being oddly silent – staring at the wall and rubbing at the bandage on his elbow. Maybe he was tired. It had been a long day for him.

Stanford read the Author’s final message again. He wondered what could possibly have unsettled them enough to hand all of their research over to someone else, never to be seen again.

He picked up his own notebook and began writing

_What a day! My mind is still reeling. If at least one page was real, then this Journal could be the key to unlocking so much more. This should be an interesting summer._

_I still have so many questions. What happened to the Author and their associates? How did they learn all of this and why did they bury it? Still, it’s reassuring to know that I have someone who will run over a bunch of gnomes to save me._

Stanford turned out the lamp on his bedside table.

“Goodnight,” he called over to Stanley. 

“Goodnight,” Stanley answered. It was still new to him to be able to look over at him as he said it instead of hearing it from the bunk below.

Stanford was asleep in minutes. Stanley stayed sitting up for a while longer, lost in thought, before exhaustion claimed him.

……

GLVFODLPHU: WKH DXWKRU NQRZV QRWKLQJ DERXW DXWR UHSDLU

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The cover having Mabel's symbol on it was inspired by a Relativity Falls tumblr post I read once, but I can't find it right now. I'll try to credit the person who wrote it properly when I do. 
> 
> Also, I'm tweaking a detail in the prologue. I originally wrote that they were told about this on their first day of summer vacation, but I realized in this chapter that that throws off the timeline. I'm going to change it to be a week after summer started. 
> 
> -platform13


	3. 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The fishing trip that did not go according to anyone's plan

_Unfortunately, luring in the beast presented some…unexpected challenges. Question Mark kept trying to eat our bait…_

Stanford added to his notes.

Across the room, Stanley was finally starting to wake up. Stanford heard his blankets rustling and his snoring stop but didn’t look away from what he was doing. 

Stanley was quiet while he went back to skimming through the pages. After a few minutes, his groggy voice asked, “What are you doing with that now?”

Stanley hadn’t been all that interested in the Journal on his own, but he was at least a willing audience to his twin’s theories about it. Stanford held up his own notebook to show him the chart that he had been making. 

“I’m trying to compile all the information that I have about the Author’s associates. There are two code names that keep coming up – ‘Question Mark’ and ‘Shooting Star’. I’m trying to see if there is anything in here that might give me an idea of who they were.”

“Oh,” Stanley sat up. “Why?”

Stanford turned back to the book. “I’ve been getting a good idea of what the Author was _like_ , but not really anything about who he _was_. He never really writes about anything before he came to Gravity Falls. So I was thinking that maybe if I could figure out something about who he worked with, it might lead us to some answers about him.”

Stanley shifted on the bed until his feet were resting on the floor. “Why do you want to find out who this guy was so bad, anyway?”

_Because he’s a kindred spirit_ , he wanted to say.

“Isn’t it hard to imagine?” he said instead. “For someone to get this far and then just…stop and decide to hide it all. _Something_ must have happened. I want to know what.”

Stanley came to sit next to him. Stanford shifted over to make room. This felt a little more natural than looking across the room at him. The extra space was nice, but they were still getting used to not having their bunk bed.

Stanley punched his arm. “Alright Sixer, we got our mystery for the summer. What d’you find so far?”

“Not much,” he admitted, looking back at the ‘Conclusions’ section of his notes. “It seems like the Author was trying to hide their identities. He never even uses ‘he’ or ‘she’ when he talks about them. The biggest thing I’ve found is about Shooting Star. It’s on the page about the flying eyeballs –” he cleared his throat and put on a deep fake voice. “During Shooting Star’s last visit to Gravity Falls…’.”

He paused to let that sink in.

Stanley just kept looking at him, clearly waiting for him to get to the point.

“Visit!” he exclaimed. He stood up and started pacing, “So Shooting Star wasn’t a local!”

Stanley still didn’t look impressed.

“So…if I’ve got this right, you’ve narrowed it down to Shooting Star living anywhere _but_ Gravity Falls?”

Stanford deflated, sitting back down on the bed.

“I said I didn’t have much,” he said, a little defensively. “But Question Mark gets mentioned a lot more. I think they were with the Author most of the time.”

It was mostly the “3” on the cover that was making this so frustrating. That meant that there were more out there – maybe even written at a time before the Author had started being so cautious.

“Breakfast is ready!" Grauntie Mabel called from downstairs.

Stanley hopped off his bed and started looking for a clean set of clothes. Stanford got up to put the Journal away.

It was said that the best place to hide something was in plain sight. Stanford had decided to take that advice. He already had as many of _The Guide to the Unexplained_ books by Tyrone Alcor as he had been able to squeeze into his bag up on the shelf, including the hardcover edition of Guide 4 that he’d convinced their mother to buy him on their last birthday. Whenever he wanted to put the Journal away he would slip the cover off of the book, put it on the Journal, and let it blend in on the shelf while he tucked the Guide in the desk drawer. It seemed to be working so far. He had gotten a little worried when he saw the odd look that Grunkle Dipper was giving the shelf the last time he had come up here, but he had relaxed once he remembered that Stanley had decided to store his brass knuckles up there too.

They found Grauntie Mabel standing in the middle of the kitchen. She had a blue sweater with a fish on in today, and her hair was in a long braid over her shoulder. She smiled at them when they came in, but then went back to looking past them down the hall. 

“’Morning. Can you two go get your uncle out here? He’s eating with us today.”

Dipper usually didn’t join them for breakfast. The man seemed to have an odd schedule. Sometimes he was gone for the day by the time that they woke up. Other mornings, he would be asleep till noon, or he would be shut up in his office doing whatever it was he was doing and Grauntie Mabel would barge in to make him eat something. Today had seemed like it was going to be one of those days. The office door had been firmly shut when they had passed by it.

Stanford had wanted to ask if Grunkle Dipper would mind, but Grauntie Mabel had stopped paying attention to them and had gone back to setting the table. 

No one had actually told them whether or not they were allowed to go in their uncle’s office. Stanford had just figured it was better to assume they weren’t, just to be on the safe side. He hesitated at the door, before resolving himself and reaching up to give it a soft, polite knock.

Then Stanley grabbed the knob and flung the door open.

Grunkle Dipper was sitting at the desk, working on his laptop. To his credit, he didn’t jump or even take his eyes off the screen at Stanley’s abrupt entry. Then again, Stanford thought, this man was used to coping with Mabel’s energy level. 

Dipper glanced up then and did look a little surprised when he saw who had come in. He closed his laptop.

“Hey boys,” he said, “Is everything okay?”

He was wearing the worn old sweater that he often had on around the house – probably a Mabel creation, with a base of what had one point probably been white, blue sleeves and collar and a blue pine tree shape in over his chest. The dark circles under his eyes were even more noticeable than usual. He must have woken up very early that morning

"Grauntie Mabel made breakfast," Stanley told him. "She wants you to come."

Dipper seemed to relax a bit then, settling back into his seat.

"I'll be there in a bit," he said. "I have a section of this that I'm trying to get done."

Stanford was taking the chance to try to surreptitiously look around the room. He had been curious about what was in here ever since he had realized that the majority of the books around the house - which covered everything from physics to mythology, medicine, geography and more - belonged to Dipper. If he hadn't had the Journal to keep him busy he knew that he probably would have been begging Grunkle Dipper to let him go through them all. So he had known that Grunkle Dipper was brighter than the average Pines. 

That still didn't mean that he was prepared for the sight of the sight of the three Cornell diplomas on the wall. 

He couldn't quite make out what they were for, but just the minimum evidence that someone in his gene pool had achieved higher education was a revelation for him.

Before he could manage to decide whether he should go further into the room to read it or just ask, he got a sudden reminder of why they were there.

“Is he coming?” Grauntie Mabel shouted.

Stanford mentally debated walking back to the kitchen to answer, but no one here usually seemed to mind if they were being loud.

“He’s in the middle of something,” He yelled back.

“Well now he’s in the middle of breakfast! Tell him to stop being a butt-face and get down here!”

Stanford wasn’t quite sure where to go from there.

“Grunkle Dipper,” said Stanley, “Grauntie Mabel said-”

“Got it, thanks.”

Despite his annoyed expression, Dipper closed his computer, stood up, and stretched.

“Alright,” he said, “I guess I can take a break. 

He reached up to scratch his head as he moved around the desk. His bangs shifted, and for a brief moment Stanford thought he saw something on his forehead. Then it was out of sight again. 

Probably just a wrinkle, he reasoned.

Dipper followed them into the kitchen. 

Grauntie Mabel beamed at him as he came in. He gave her a grumpy stare in response.

She brought each of them a plate once they were seated. Stanley and Stanford looked dubiously at theirs.

“Grauntie Mabel?” said Stanford. “What..is it?”

He knew on a conceptual level that it was pancakes, but it was a little hard to process.

They appeared to be chocolate chip pancakes (arranged in a rainbow stack of colors that pancakes did not usually come in), topped with extremely glittery whipped cream, sprinkles, and a small plastic dinosaur.

“Mabelcakes!” she replied. “They’re my specialty.”

She left the room to go get the paper. Stanford picked the dinosaur off the top. It was an ankylosaurus.

“Grunkle Dipper,” he asked, hesitatingly,” “Is the whipped cream edible?”

He didn’t want to be rude, but that felt like a fair question.

“It’s-it’s probably fine,” Dipper answered, cutting into his own food, “I mean, she’d been making me eat glitter for about 6 decades now, and I’m still doing okay.”

“You’re not eating it,” Stanley pointed out. He was somehow already a third of the way through his Mabelcakes.

He was right. Grunkle Dipper was having just the pancakes with a pteranodon on the side. 

“Oh, not because of the glitter. Mabel has a higher sugar tolerance now than I did when I was ten. She used to put sparklers on too, but I told her to stop doing that in the house after she left a scorch mark on the table.”

Grantie Mabel was coming back in, so Stanford hurriedly took a bite. It was actually really good. It was really more of a dessert than a breakfast, but it was a big step up over the box-mix stuff they usually got.

She dropped the paper on the table and went to wash an empty plate - apparently, she hadn't felt like waiting for them to eat her Mabelcakes.

The latest edition of "Wacky News Magazine" had come too. Stanford picked it up and started flipping through. Most of the articles that he had seen in the magazine were clearly fabricated, but he found that occasionally something with a little more evidence supporting it could slipped in. He passed by the story about the sentient beard and the Corn Man before his eyes settled on one of the pages. 

He nudged his brother, gesturing down at the page when Stanley looked up at him.

Stanley leaned over and looked down at the magazine. "'Human-sized hamsterball?' Didn't think that was your style, but we could make it work, Buddy."

"No, no," said Stanford, "the next page".

Stanley read the photo contest ad. "1000 bucks for a photo!" he exclaimed. "How do we get in on that?"

Stanford glanced over at Grunkle Dipper, who appeared to be absorbed in the local news section of the main paper, before he leaned over and whispered, "Do you think it's too late to get a photo of the Gnomes?" Stanley shrugged.

"Eat up everyone!" said Grauntie Mabel with a singsong voice and an approving look at Stanley's almost-empty plate. "We've got a big day planned!"

Dipper looked up from behind the paper to give her a wary look. "What exactly are we doing today?"

“Don’t you remember what today is?” she asked, still facing the sink.

“Monday?” suggested Stanley, as Stanford tried to think if he’d forgotten anything. 

‘Monday’ was actually not a bad guess. Monday and Tuesday were the only days of the week that the shop was closed.

“It’s….”

There was a bang as Mabel spun around. The party popper in her hands sent confetti fluttering down on their heads and what was left of breakfast.

“…Family Fun Day!”

Dipper sighed, picking the little bits of coloured paper off of his Mabelcakes. “Of course it is.”

“Is this going to be like last time?” Stanley asked eagerly.

Their last ‘Family Fun Day’ had initially been about playing board games with Grauntie Mabel, but it had quickly deteriorated into her teaching them how to cheat at Poker. Stanley had been delighted.

“No,” said Grauntie Mabel said as she put the used popper in the garbage. “We’re heading out today.”

“So, where are you taking us?” asked Dipper. 

“You’ll see. Meet me out front in 15 minutes.”

…

19 minutes and one pig being solemnly left in charge of the house later, they were sitting in the car wearing blindfolds.

Deciding what to bring had been a bit of a challenge since Grauntie Mabel had refused to tell them where they were going. As he had been getting ready, he had remembered seeing a couple of disposable cameras in the desk drawers when they had sorted through everything that was in there. He rummaged around until he found two and put them in his backpack along with the Journal. 

The photo competition was still in the back of his mind. He didn’t know what they would be doing that day, but it couldn’t hurt to be prepared in case he saw something.

Grunkle Dipper, who had switched from the sweater back into his flannel shirt and cap. had refused to put on a blindfold. Stanford wasn’t sure if that was reassuring or not. At least someone else would be able to see where they were going, but it did mean that he had his doubts too.

It might just be because he couldn’t see, but Grauntie Mabel definitely seemed to be a much less cautious driver than her brother. It felt like they were going faster than usual, and they took turns a little more sharply.

Eventually they started slowing down. And they heard Dipper say, “Really, Mabel?”

“Yes.”

She still wouldn’t let them take the blindfolds off until they had been guided out of the car. He could hear voices and splashes. Had she brought them to a pool?

No, not a pool. As they were guided forward, he could feel the ground under his shoes start to change. He’d recognize the feel of sand anywhere.

The blindfold was pulled off.

“Ta daa!” trilled Grauntie Mabel, arms outstretched for the big reveal.

They were standing in front of a lake surrounded on its other sides by steep cliffs. People wandered around everywhere: on the wooden pier, going in and out of the shack, and out on the water. 

Dipper’s cap had been swapped out for a blue fishing hat that had his nickname embroidered on it in gold. Mable had one in pink.

“It’s fishing season!” Mabel declared.

She reached out and plopped two more hats on their heads. Stanley’s was red. His was brown.

Despite the amount of time that they had spent looking at boats in Glass Shard beach, Stanford didn’t think they’d ever actually been fishing before. He wasn’t sure how he felt about this development.

“You’re taking us fishing?” said Stanley, sounding a bit skeptical.

“Yeah. The whole town’s out here!”

There _were_ a lot of unfamiliar faces here. Stanford slipped his hands into his pockets and took stock of them all.

One boat held a couple with a wide-eyed boy who looked maybe 4 or 5. The mother had a fishing line cast into the side of the water while the boy watched with his little fists clenched in excitement. Even from on the dock, they could hear him saying, “Get ‘em, get ‘em!”

On the dock were three middle aged men acting like frat boys. The one with long blond hair and a beer can in one hand shoved the one with gelled-up brown hair into the lake before turning to high-five the third. The man who had fallen in was heavyset enough that Stanford could feel the splash from where he was.

Another boat held a well-muscled woman with shoulder length red hair. She was reclining more than they would have thought possible in the boat, while the three red-headed girls of varying size in the boat with her attempted to thread worms onto their hooks. 

The woman saw them and reached one hand up to give a lazy wave. Grunkle Dipper waved back.

“You guys have a boat?” asked Stanley. 

“We do not have a boat,” said Dipper. He turned to Mabel. “You asked Zeus?”

Or at least, to Stanford it _sounded_ like he said ‘Zeus’. He wasn’t totally sure he had heard that right though. He assumed that they were talking about a person they knew, and that Dipper was not asking his sister if she had prayed to the God of Thunder to grant them a worthy vessel.

Grauntie Mabel laughed, “I didn’t even have to ask. It was his idea.”

At that, Grunkle Dipper smiled too. “Of course it was.”

Mabel gestured out at the docks. “He even sent us some help.

Stanford turned to see what she was pointing at. Maria was climbing out of one of the boats at the dock.

“Hey Maria,” their uncle said. “You got roped into this too?”

“Yes. Abuelito couldn’t come. He had an emergency with the toaster.”

This was accepted as an excuse much more easily than Stanford would have thought.

Stanford still wasn’t sure about fishing, but it would be nice to get on something actually sea-worthy. It would be good to learn how to operate a boat before they got the Stan-O-War functional.

There was a sudden commotion from the far side of the area.

“It’s coming!” A voice screeched, “Run for your lives!”

An old woman was running through. She knocked over a table on her way and grabbed on to the man that had shoved his friend in the water. 

“The monster’s almost here!” she yelled at him. “What are you wasting your time for?”

Then she shoved him in the lake too.

The redheaded woman was sitting up in her boat, but a lot of other people weren’t even reacting. Those that were just laughed, or gawked at the spectacle.

The woman certainly didn’t look like much of a credible witness. A hat that looked to be made of scrunched tinfoil sat on top of long grey hair with a slight tint of blonde. She had on a dirty purple sweater and a patched grey skirt.

“You’ll all regret not listening to me!” she screamed, before burying her face in her hands. Her shoulders shook with what might have been laughter or sobs.

“Mabel,” said Grunkle Dipper quietly. 

The boys turned to look. He and his sister had their eyes fixed on each other. 

Grauntie Mabel gave a little smile, and nodded.

“Okay Bro. I got this one.”

She turned back to look at Stanley and Stanford. 

“Sorry guys,” she said, “I’ve got to go take care of something. We’ll make plans for tonight, okay?”

They watched their Great-Aunt head over to the woman. She went still for an instant when she saw Mabel approach, but then her face slowly slid into a wicked grin.

“What have you been up to?” Grauntie Mabel asked. The grin got wider.

“Okay, Pacifica,” Grauntie Mabel said. “Let’s get you home. We can do lunch.”

The old woman blinked, and the grin slipped off of her face. She straightened up.

“Fine, but you’re driving,” she said. Her voice came out almost…stuck up. Posh, maybe. 

Stanford sincerely hoped for the sake of Grauntie Mabel’s safety that she wasn’t going to let this woman drive her anywhere. 

Mabel didn’t seem offended. She laughed, and said, “Alright, let’s go.” 

She ushered the woman off, exchanging one last look with her brother before they headed off to the parking lot. 

The boys turned back to their uncle. Now that the one adult in the family that that actually wanted to get on a boat with them had left, they weren’t sure if this whole fishing trip was still on. 

Sure enough, Dipper was now glancing around the area, looking a little on edge. 

He sighed.

“Sorry,” he said.

“It’s okay”, Stanford replied. It would have been nice to get out on the water, but if something else had come up there was nothing he could do about it. 

Besides, they had just gotten a much more interesting prospect for the day dropped into their lap, and there was no reason to let a good opportunity go to waste.

“Would it be alright if we still stayed around the docks for a while?” he asked, “We’ll be okay on our own. I just want to take a look around before we go. Even just at least while we’re waiting for Grauntie Mabel to get back with the car?”

“We’re not stranded here,” Dipper answered, absently. He was still looking around the docks. “You two can get a ride back home with Maria.”

“I don’t have to take the boys home,” Maria said suddenly. “I can still go with them on the boat. My grandfather will not mind if it is just the three of us.”

This was an ally that Stanford had not been expecting. 

He wasn’t sure whether it would make a difference, but apparently, Maria’s guarantee was worth more than Stanford had expected.

Dipper relaxed. 

“Okay. If Maria is sure that she doesn’t mind-” Dipper glanced at Maria, who just kept her usual, tranquil stare, “- and you wear life jackets and put on sunscreen, then you two can go with her. I’ll meet you back here later.”

…

Stanford had been assuming from the conversation that ‘Zeus’ was Maria’s grandfather, but now he wasn’t so sure. Apparently, the boat was named the “S.S. Cool Dude”. Also, the figurehead was an action figure. Then again, maybe her grandfather was just like that. 

Once he had his life jacket on, Stanford checked again in his bag for the cameras. He was glad he’d brought two. Now he could give one to Stanley as a back-up. 

It seemed too good to be true that someone would come in screaming about a monster right when he was trying to find something to document, but from what he’d seen of the town so far he wouldn’t be surprised if it was real. The only problem was that Grauntie Mabel had interrupted before the woman could say what they were looking for. Checking around the water seemed like a good place to start.

They started moving as Maria pulled away from the dock, and slowed to a stop in open water.

“Ready Stanley?” he asked.

Stanley was sitting on the boat next to him, chin resting in his hand. He didn’t even look up.

“Ready for what?” he grumbled.

Stanley was unhappy about something. Stanford couldn’t think of what. They were out on the water on the trail of something big. He could feel it. Normally, Stanley would have been thrilled.

Maybe his brother just didn’t understand the situation. With a quick check to see if Maria was paying any attention to them, he pulled Stanley off to the side.

“You wanted that thousand dollars, right?” he whispered.

Stanley started to come out of his bad mood as Stanford filled him in.

“We’ve got Gravity Falls to work with here,” he said, “we’re going to win that contest, no doubt about it!”

“Yeah!’ said Stanley, “I bet Dipper and Mabel will wish they’d come with us then!”

Stanford was getting more and more excited. This was a chance to get a discovery published! Well, published in _Wacky News Magazine,_ but he supposed that you had to start somewhere.

“So, we are looking for the monster?”

They both jumped and turned to look at Maria. She was wiping down the windows, looking nowhere near as concerned as most people would be after this sort of revelation. 

The boys exchanged a look.

“Maria,” Stanford said, “Do you believe in monsters?”

She kept wiping as she answered.

“Oh yes, yes. My grandfather is always talking about the strange things in this town. He says that the mailman is a werewolf.”

They had seen the mailman. Stanford had to admit that that was a plausible theory.

“Okay,” said Stanford, “you’re a local. If there was something hiding around here, where do you think it would be?”

Maria thought for a moment, then pointed behind them. 

They turned. A small island loomed through a heavy mist, surrounded by cliffs. They could make out jagged evergreens, the hazy outline of a totem pole, and just looking at it seemed to give them a chill.

“Works for me,” said Stanley.

…

Stanford started flipping through the Journal as Maria went back to the wheel to get them moving again. The Journal said that there was supposedly a giant living head in the lake somewhere, but he wasn’t sure if that was what they were dealing with here. He wanted to check out any possible options.

“Maria, what’s this?”

Stanley had gone poking around the back of the boat and had peeked under a tarp. He pulled it back to reveal a barrel filled to the brim with light-brown chunks of…something.

“It’s for the fishies,” Maria told him. She went over and, with a slight struggle, managed to spin the barrel around so they could read the words painted on the side. 

Stanley narrowed his eyes and stroked his chin.

“I see,” he said. “Fattening them up before you catch them, eh? Good thinking.”

Maria laughed, “No, no. It’s to make the fishies come to the boat.”

Stanley though this over for a few seconds. Then his eyes lit up.

“Can I keep some?” he asked. Maria nodded.

“What would you even do with that?” Stanford asked. Undeterred, Stanley came over to unzip Stanford’s backpack and started dropping chunks of the fish food in.

“I dunno,” he said. “I’ll figure something out. Maybe the monster will want it!”

Stanford thought about this. 

“That’s a possibility,” he said, “but right now we don’t even know for sure if it’s a fish. We’ll bring some extra, just in case.”

He sort of regretted suggesting that when Stanley shoved more fish food into his bag.

...

Stanford tucked the journal away as Stanley left his job of tossing fish food into the water to try and fail to catch the pelican that had landed on the boat.

The pelican took up so much of their attention that they found themselves crash landing into the island before they even realized that they were close. 

Carefully, Stanford pulled himself over the edge and let himself slowly lower down. There was a thud as Stanley dropped down beside him. 

Maria was getting out too. Come to think of it, he wasn’t quite sure what to do with her now that they were here. The ride had been great, but was she planning on coming with them?

“You can wait here if you want,” he told Maria, “We’re okay.”

Maria continued climbing out of the boat.

“No, I would like to come. Besides, I told Mr. Pines that I would go with you.”

Stanford thought it over. They had never really tried operating with a third wheel before, but Maria seemed to be on board with this whole adventure. Besides, he doubted that they would be able to convince her to leave.

He could tell that Stanley had some mixed feelings about her being there, but that was most likely about whether or not she would want a cut of the prize money.

They started walking.

Stanford examined the island. He knew that making assumptions could be risky in investigative work, but Scuttlebutt Island definitely seemed like the right place to start looking. The air here swirled with fog despite the clear skies that had covered the rest of the lake. He could barely make out anything besides the others and the shapes of trees. Somewhere in the distance, he could hear an owl hooting.

“Hey guys,” Stanley called, as Stanford was starting to question _why_ he was hearing an owl so early in the day, “Check it out.”

Stanley was standing by the “Scuttlebutt Island” sign. As Stanford and Maria watched, he covered up the “Scuttle”.

Under Stanley’s expectant stare, Stanford attempted to give a polite laugh. It came out sounding a lot more lukewarm than he had intended. Maria didn’t say anything. 

Stanley’s eyes narrowed. 

“My genius is not appreciated here,” he grumbled.

“Oh,” said Maria suddenly, “I understand now. You covered up part of the word to make a new word. That is very clever.”

Stanley perked back up.

“See? This lady gets it!”

…

Their first big lead turned out to be an old sunken ship covered in beavers.

“But then, what was that sound?” Stanford asked. 

The sound came again off to their left.

One of the beavers had discovered a rusted, abandoned chainsaw lying farther along the shore. They watched the beaver gnaw on it until it sputtered back to life.

Stanley grinned.

“I think I just found my new pet,” he said. 

Then he started snapping photos of Chainsaw Beaver.

Feeling a little frustrated, Stanford kicked at a rock on the ground. It fell into the water. The motion made the fish food rattle around in his backpack. Maybe the old lady had just been crazy after all.

The water rippled as the stone fell in. 

Then it rippled again. 

Stanford took a step back. 

Now the water was really shaking

An odd shape breached the surface – a back. 

Stanford scrambled for his camera. He managed to get off a few shots before he realized that Stanley wasn’t taking any pictured behind him.

“Come on!” he told him. For some reason, Stanley and Maria were just slowly backing away from the lake. “Now’s our chance.”

He turned back around, camera at the ready-

And then slowly lowered his arms.

Its long, graceful neck was raised out of the water, holding the slender, finned head up high above him. It was like looking at a dinosaur. It looked something majestic and ancient and powerful, and its glowing eyes were fixed on Stanford. 

The head started to draw back, poised to strike. 

Something small and yellow went flying through the air in front of him. The creature recoiled with a growl as Stanley’s camera hit its nose, losing its concentration to start shaking its head.

With an agitated thrash of its tail, the old ship was smashed to pieces. Beavers came raining down around them.

“OKAY TIME TO GO!” Stanley screamed. There was a rough jerk on his arm as his brother grabbed him and started running. There was a crunch behind them as the creature started to pull itself onto land. 

He was mostly dragged for a few steps before he managed to get his feet properly under him to run on his own. Stanley didn’t let go of his arm, continuing to pull him onto the relative safety of land.

They had run quite a bit further onto the island – with Stanford struggling not to trip over anything the whole way, when he realized that it had gone quiet behind them. 

“Wait!” he gasped out. Stanley stopped.

He tried to listen as he caught his breath. He could still hear the creature’s calls off in the distance, but there was no sign that they were being followed.

“Ha!” said Stanley, “Is that thing stuck in the water?”

“Plesiousaurs…could come on land a bit,” Stanford panted. He bent over with his hands resting on his knees “but there’s…debate about how much…they did or how much they could move. Maybe this thing is similar.”

They spun around as at rustle behind them. It was just Maria, who didn’t seem to have even been running. Stanford actually hadn’t even realized that they had left her behind. There was a beaver clinging to her shoulder. She didn’t seem too bothered by it.

“Uh…Maria? You got a…,” Stanley gestured towards the beaver, “…friend…there.”

She turned her head to look at it. The beaver chattered happily at her.

She did look a little surprised to see it, but made no move to remove it. 

“Oh, yes,” she said, with a little laugh.

“…Alright then,” said Stanley, after a long pause. 

The beaver didn’t seem to be causing any trouble for now, so Stanford decided to let it go. 

“Let’s head back to the boat to regroup,” he suggested. They had seen the creature. Now they could try to figure out what they wanted to do next. 

Together, they staggered back through the mist. Stanford’s mind was racing the whole way there.

“I wonder if it’s a relative of the Loch Ness Monster, or even the same species? It had a lot of similarities to most depictions I’ve seen of it. It would probably make most sense if they are survivors of the Plesiousaurs after all! Maybe if-”

They were just approaching the boat now. But before they could take a step on to it, Stanley grabbed on and pulled them both to a halt.

There were ripples in the water on the other side of the boat. As they watched, a green scaly spine emerged before slipping away again. 

The creature hadn’t followed them up onto the island, but it hadn’t exactly left them alone either. 

Stanford stared hunting through his pockets, trying to find his camera. It wasn’t there. He dimly remembered feeling something slip out of his hands, and then hearing the crunch as they had started running. 

The boat creaked thumped as the creature came up close. A chunk of the back railing fell into the water.

“We gotta get out of here,” said Stanley.

“What?!” he said, turning to him. “It’s right there! Let’s go back to where we saw it first. Maybe your camera survived-”

Stanley was just giving him a blank look.

Another piece of the boat broke off.

Stanford took a deep breath.

Maria set the beaver back on the ground.

He supposed it was a good thing that it wasn’t going directly after them then, but they were going to have a serious problem on their hands if it decided to destroy their ride home.

Watching the creature move, he was suddenly reminded of the old fish tank that they’d had in their 4th Grade classroom. Their teacher had brought it in on her own (it certainly hadn’t been part of the school’s budget), but they hadn’t had it for long. Some of the idiots in their class had started teasing the fish by dropping in little rocks. Some of the fish would shy away, but others would swim closer to see if the sudden small moving thing in their limited environment was edible.

He passed Stanley a rock and directed him where to throw it.

Stanley managed to get a good amount of distance, and sure enough, the creature switched direction and headed to where the splash had been. They all shoved together to get the boat into the water and scrambled aboard.

Maria got them quickly turned and speeding off in the newly opened gap. Stanford breathed a sigh of mixed relief and disappointment. It was frustrating – to come so close to the unknown and have neither proof nor real understanding of it. Still, there would be other chances. He would make sure.

“Guys?” Stanley yelled, “Nessie’s coming too!”

There was a roar behind them. And then there was sound of snapping jaws.

Stanford looked behind the boat. The creature was moving at top speed. But so was Maria, who was moving them in a big loop around the island to try to shake it off. 

He slipped off his backpack and started hunting through it for the Journal. He knew that he had gone through the whole thing already, but he still had some desperate hope that now that he knew what he was dealing with some new bit of information might somehow appear.

One of the clumps of fish food came out with it. Feeling frantic and a little annoyed, he grabbed it and tossed it over the side of the boat. He started turning through the pages, looking for anything about Scuttlebutt Island or lake monsters. He didn’t remember seeing anything about the creature, but now that he thought of it there had been something about a cave-

A sudden wave almost capsized the boat. He heard his brother scream as he went tumbling down to the deck. Stanford staggered to his feet and gripped onto the side of the boat as soon as the floorboards began to settle underneath him to see what was happening.

The creature had made a sudden lunge forward, but had stopped just before striking the boat. As Maria swerved to get them back on course, Stanford could see it raise its head out of the water to chomp down on the brown lump floating on the surface.

A sudden epiphany had Stanford scrambling back to his backpack. He scooped out two more of the fish food lumps and threw them as hard as he could – which, admittedly, was not very hard – directly behind them. The creature swerved in the water and headed directly to where they had landed. Stanford saw the enormous mouth open and snap shut to swallow both lumps in one bite as their boat gained the first bit of real distance since it had started chasing them. 

He ran back to back to the barrel. It had been placed right up against the side of the boat, and had remained miraculously upright as the boat had tipped. He grabbed it near the bottom and started trying to lift it towards the edge. He could barely budge it. 

“Stanley!” he yelled. His brother may or may not have understood what he was trying to do, but within seconds he was there next to him.

On a burst of pure adrenaline, the two of them actually managed to topple it over the edge. With a cry, the creature dove under and reappeared next to the barrel, smashing up every bit of the floating food that it could. They watched the barrel fill with water and sink, taking the food with it as they sped away. The creature descended into the depths with it, and did not emerge again. 

Maria kept up the speed for another 10 seconds or so. Then she gradually let it drop until they were sitting still on the water, silently watching for any shake on its surface.

…

Grunkle Dipper was nowhere in sight when they got back to the dock. 

It would have been easy to spot him if he had been. Most of the people that had been there that morning were now either out on the water or home. Thinking that maybe he hadn’t expected them back for a while, they decided to find a seat on the ground and wait for him. Maria laid down on a log bench and closed her eyes.

As Stanley amused himself with methodically finding and breaking apart sticks, Stanford pulled out his notebook. He didn’t manage to get a photo of the creature, but he still wanted to preserve it. He started to sketch it as best as he could from the parts of its body that he had been able to see. 

He had a basic recreation of the head by the time he brought up their Uncle again. 

“Maybe we took too long and we just went home.” Stanley suggested.

“I will go check,” said Maria. She hadn’t moved since she had laid down, but her eyes slid back open and she stood up instantly. She left them for a minute while she went to her car to get her cell phone. 

If Dipper had given up on waiting for them, then they would have to ask Maria if she would drive them back to the Cottage. If she wouldn’t, then she would probably at least give them directions. 

“He tried to call,” she said, punching in the code for her voicemail while she walked back. She went for at least a minute as silent she listened. Then she hung up.

“What did he say?” asked Stanford.

“Nothing,” she said, tucking her phone back into her pocket. “He will be back soon.”

Whatever she had heard had seemed too long for just an _I’ll be back soon_ , but Stanford decided not to push it. After all, Maria had been very helpful to them today.

They were waiting there for another 10 minutes or so before they spotted him coming towards them with long, quick steps from the other side of the docks. They stood up as he reached them. Once he was close, they could see that the sleeves of his shirt, his hat and hair, and one of his legs looked wet. He didn’t seem too bothered by it.

“Oh, good,” he said, “there you are.”

“We’ve been _here._ Where were you?” Stanley asked him. He looked him over again. “Did you fall in the lake?”

A phone started ringing. 

“Hold on,” said Grunkle Dipper. He pulled out his cellphone, giving the damp casing a quick wipe on his jeans before answering.

“Hello?” he said, and then, “yeah, I’m with them now.” He listened for a moment before going on. “It’s taken care of.”

He had a longer pause. “Okay, we’ll head back now. See you soon.”

He hung up the phone and then turned back to them.

“That was Mabel,” he explained. “She’s going to meet us back home. You can come too if you don’t have anything else going on, Maria.”

It was becoming clear that he didn’t have any intention of answering Stanley’s question. The three Pines got back into the Station wagon while Maria climbed into her truck. 

Once they made it back to the shack – which took about 10 minutes longer with Dipper behind the wheel than it had with Mabel – they found their Great Aunt standing out front waiting for them.

“Go get changed, Dipper,” she said. Dipper seemed to remember how wet he was then, and headed over to his room. Grauntie Mabel led them back towards the entrance to the store. 

“What are we doing now?” Stanford asked.

She stopped at the doorway, turning around and leaning against the wall to face them.

“Family Fun Day’s not over yet, right? I said we’d do something tonight.”

She reached back without turning around and opened the door. 

It looked like she had taken every cushion and blanket in the house and had arranged them into something that was half-couch, half-nest against the front counter. A projector sat next to the cash register. The smaller display shelves that usually stood in the middle of the room had been pushed to the back to make room for the big screen that was there now. 

“You boys up for a movie night?” asked Grauntie Mabel.

Stanley, who had started bouncing a little in his excitement, practically dove into the blankets.

Grunkle Dipper came to join them a few minutes later in his pine tree sweater with a bowl of chips in each hand and Waddles at his heels, and after a quick stop at home Maria let herself in the shop door. Once everyone was in the right spot, Mabel brought over a box filled with DVDs.

“What are we in the mood for: Horror or Comedy?”

…

"EXWW LVODQG": D PXOWLYHUVDO FODVVLF

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey everyone! Thank you for the attention that this story has been getting! I had a bit of a tough time with this chapter, and I'm trying to get it posted now before I head out. I think Headhunters will be done a lot sooner, but this chapter ended up being twice as long as I thought it would be.   
> I'm definitely having some formatting issues that I'll probably be trying to fix later tonight (mainly with the end notes and trying how to mark this as not complete), so sorry if that spams the people that have this bookmarked. I'm not quite sure how that works.  
> A note on the chapter titles: You may have noticed that I'm not doing them. It would take me a lot longer to update if I was trying to make myself come up with something witty, so for now I'm just sticking with numbers that line up with the episode numbers. I have some extra scenes planned, but I will be marking those as like 'chapter 7.5' or something. If anyone has suggestions for chapter titles, let me know and I'll add them in. 
> 
> Thanks for reading, 
> 
> -platform13


	4. 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some heads are hunted for.

“ _Ducktective will return after these messages._ ”

“How do you think the murderer got that guy’s leg through the glass like that?” asked Stanley, who was upside-down on the plush blue living room couch and shoving Waddles away from his popcorn with one hand. 

Stanford, who sat curled up by the arm rest, was having issues with a few too many other aspects of the show to try to address that.

“So, clearly the constable can understand the duck, but he’s not quacking and Ducktective isn’t speaking English. Did they both just learn to interpret each other’s languages without speaking them? And how does one give a duck enough understanding of human society to understand when something is suspicious and something isn’t? I mean, admittedly a duck can be a prey species in certain contexts, so it’s maybe plausible that they have an intrinsic understanding of when a predator has been there, but the whole premise still seems unlikely.”

“Well I like it,” said Stanley. “It’s got talking animals, dead bodies, dumb cops, jokes that I’m pretty sure were supposed to go over my head. Besides, Grauntie Mabel says that it gets really good once you get to season 3.”

“It does seem a little insulting to British law enforcement, doesn’t it? It suggests that the entire force can’t rival the intelligence of a single water fowl.”

Stanley flipped himself right-side up. “I bet you could do a better job than them _and_ the duck. You’re great at figuring stuff out.”

Sixer’s cheeks went a bit red, but that got a smile out of him.

He punched Stanley’s arm. “Just let me know if you’ve got a mystery for me.”

“Boys,” Maria called from the doorway. Neither of them had heard her come down the hall. “I have something to show you.”

“A rat fighting a squirrel?” Stanley suggested eagerly, at the exact moment that his twin said, “Fossilized remains of an extinct species?”

“No,” said Maria, coming down the steps. “It is not those things. It is very strange. Come with me.”

Maria led them down one of the halls that connected the shop to the main part of the house. The big wooden bookcase had been moved. In its usual spot, there was a door with peeling white paint cut into the floral wallpaper. 

“I was moving the bookshelf to sweep, and I found this behind it.”

Stanford looked back at the shelf, which was still packed with books.

“How did you manage to move it without taking everything off? You wouldn’t have had enough time to reorganize everything, but it would be too heavy otherwise.”

Maria stared at him.

“I’m not sure that I understand what you are asking,” she said. 

“…What did you find?” Stanford said weakly, after a long pause.

Maria opened the door. 

They could see cobwebs snapping apart on the inside as it opened. Stanley almost sneezed from the sudden waft of dust.

The darkened room was filled with silent people. Stanley almost panicked before he realized how familiar some of them looked. 

Stanford cautiously approached the wax figure of Nixon. “The attention to detail is incredible.”

One standing near the lady with the crown caught Stanley’s eye. “Something went wrong with this one.”

The figure that Stanley had found was pear-shaped, but not in the good way. The face was covered in wrinkles, and scraggly wisps of grey on its head and chin were all the hair it had. Its mouth was open in a smile, revealing a top and bottom set of buck teeth.

“Hey dudes,” it said.

Both boys recoiled with a scream. The man stepped into the light coming through the door.

“Fear not,” he said, “It is only I – _Soos_.”

…

It took Mabel, who had been summoned by the sound of her great-nephews’ unholy screeches as they had fled the room, to coax them back inside. Maria was chatting with the stranger when they got back in.

“Is everything- Oh no.”

Grunkle Dipper got one step into the doorway and stopped. 

“ _No._ ” he said, and left the room.

Grauntie Mabel followed him out. She came back in dragging him by his shirt. “Oh come on Dipper, they’re not _that_ bad.”

Dipper managed to struggle free, but stayed in the room this time. “Yes they are.”

“Don’t mind him,” Mabel told them, with a dismissive wave in their uncle’s direction. “He’s just scared of wax people.”

Grunkle Dipper threw his hands up. “I’m not _scared of wax people._ Something just always seemed _off_ about these ones.”

Entertaining as this conversation was, Stanley’s curiosity got the better of him.

“So…is anyone gonna explain why we _have_ a secret wax-people room, or are we just supposed to figure that out? Also, why is that strange man lurking in our secret wax-people room?”

Grantie Mable grinned at him. 

“Behold!” she exclaimed, taking in the room with a sweep of her arms. “The Gravity Falls Wax Museum.”

“And Soos!” added Soos, who was still standing next to Wax Sherlock Holmes.

Mabel gave him a warm smile and a pat on his bald head. “And Soos.” 

“Stanley, Stanford, this is my Grandfather,” Maria explained. “Abuelito, this is Stanley and Stanford.”

There was some resemblance there at a closer look, but he still hadn’t quite been expecting that. In most immigrant families that Stanley had seen it was the older people that tended to have the accents. His was nowhere near as noticeable as Maria’s.

“He’s over a lot,” said Dipper. “Actually, I’m surprised you haven’t met him yet.”

“See, we’re kind of like, lifelong best friends and junk,” he sidled over to Grunkle Dipper and reached up to put hand on his shoulder. Dipper didn’t object. “I like to know what’s going on over here.”

Soos took his hand back down and looked around the room. “I remember when you had all this set up. ‘Twas a magical time.”

“It was one of our best exhibits.” Grauntie Mabel told the boys, “I got them from this salesman wandering through town. He said that they ‘came at a terrible cost,’ or whatever, but it was actually pretty reasonable.”

“I think he was talking more about the mental trauma,” Dipper interrupted. Mabel ignored him.

“They weren’t for sale – we had them all out in the shop and gave tours while we let our stock build up. For a while we were getting people lined up out the door.”

“So, why did it all end up in here?” asked Stanford.

She adjusted Wax Sherlock Holmes’ magnifying glass as she answered

“Well, after a while business started slowing down. It was time to bring in something fresh. Something _bold._ ”

“By which she means, she introduced Gravity Falls to the Caticature,” Dipper added.

“The what now?” asked Stanley.

“I’ll make you one later. We had them all!” she straightened up and went into tour mode. “Genghis Kahn, Sherlock Holmes,” she stopped and stared at the one that looked like a goblin man.

“Larry King,” said Dipper.

“Larry King, and our star attraction – Sweet Moses!”

She had made it to the corner of the room, where a pair of feet with some ankle stood inside a pool of melted wax. She dropped down next to it, dismayed.

Stanford stepped closer, inspecting it. “Who was that one?”

“Lincoln, I think,” Grunkle Dipper answered. “Looks like the light from the window got him.”

Grauntie Mabel was still kneeling next to the puddle. Stanley walked over and awkwardly patted her on the back. “Is it too late to get your money back?”

Mabel reached back, caught him in one arm, and tugged him up against her side without taking her eyes off what used to be Abraham Lincoln. 

"Probably," she told him, "But you know what? We're not going to live in the past. Lincoln's time is over. Do you boys think you can help me get this wax off the floor?"

"Sure," said Stanford, coming closer. “What are you going to do with it?”

She stood there, beaming as she turned to face them.

“We’re going to make our own wax figure.”

…

"So then, we can have this section of the rainbow opened up, like a door, and coming down the staircase from there we can put a fairy riding...not a horse, that's too expected, like a sea lion..."

Stanford let her keep rambling for a bit. He was having some serious doubts about the structural integrity and mythological accuracy of her vision, but he didn't want to interrupt. 

He, Grauntie Mabel, and Stanley were sitting around the kitchen table for a planning session. They had managed to scrape up most of the wax and supplemented with some that the Crafter's Cottage had in reserve to make a cube of it that was taller than Mabel.

“Okay,” said Stanford, when she finally took a breath. “But maybe it might be good to try something a little…simpler”

Mabel quickly sketched something and turned it around for them to see. “Like a waffle with big arms.”

Stanley slammed a fist on the table. “Yes.”

“Or,” Stanford cut in again, as the sketch of the Waffle with Big Arms stared him down, “maybe a person. All of the others are people. You can make one to go with them. How about someone you know?”

Grauntie Mabel gave a soft hum, thinking it over as she tapped the sketchbook page with her pencil.

There were footsteps and then a series of crashes behind them. Stanford turned in his seat. Grunkle Dipper had come into the kitchen and attempted to get something out of the cupboard, somehow causing an avalanche of cans in the process. He rubbed his head with a soft, “Ow,” and then picked a can off of the floor.

He lifted the can up to the light, narrowing his eyes in concentration while his other hand went to his chin. He looked like the Constable from Ducktective inspecting a clue.

“This expired three years ago,” he said.

Mabel kept her eyes on him as she stood. Then she spun around, gaze lifted to the heavens as she clasped her hands in front of her. 

“Oh Muse, you work in mysterious ways.”

“Why is my sister talking to the ceiling?” Dipper asked Stanley and Stanford as he gathered up cans. He didn’t sound like he needed an answer. 

…

Mabel chewed thoughtfully on the handle of her brush as she stared at her wax-brother. “Needs more glitter.”

Stanley looked at it dubiously. To him, it looked like it had plenty of glitter on it already.

“Would he really want it that…sparkly?”

Mabel turned away from the block of wax to crouch down next to him. 

“One day,” she told him solemnly, “you’ll learn that _everything_ is better with more glitter. No exceptions.”

She reached out her other arm without looking away from him and said, “Glitter bucket”. Obediently, Stanford fetched it and hung the handle from her outstretched hand. 

The boys retreated to a safe distance as she stood up and hurled the contents of the entire bucket onto the sculpture. Surprisingly, her action didn’t leave anywhere near as much glitter scattered around the room as they had expected. She was experienced at this. 

Even Stanley had to admit that the glitter did improve things. Now the whole statue was practically glowing under the light.

"Okay, so I've been going through the rest of the cabinet, and it turns out that that we have to throw out about-" Dipper stopped mid-sentence as he on his way in form the kitchen and stared at the wax version of himself. 

"What do you think, Dip?" his sister asked. 

He came in for a closer look." When he turned back to her, it was with a little smile on his face.

"Not bad, Mabel. You've outdone yourself this time."

She grinned back at him. 

"In that case," her volume quickly went up to a shout, "the Wax Museum is back in business!"

Grunkle Dipper quickly stopped being sentimental. “No,” said Dipper. He backed up a step and pointed at his sister. “The wax museum was the _worst_ thing you’ve ever tried to set up here. This is still my house, and I’m putting my foot down. You are _not_ reopening it.”

…

The next day, they held the grand re-opening of the Gravity Falls Wax Museum.

They all had their own assigned roles. Maria was out front, directing people to park and find their seats. Stanford was on tech support. 

Stanley had not really gotten a chance to choose his own job. Dipper hadn’t stuck around for the show, but before he left he had muttered something in Mabel’s ear and she had immediately put Stanley on the ticket booth.

Grauntie Mabel had decided to charge $5 for entry. In his opinion she should have made it 15. In another situation he might have considered making it 15 himself and split the difference with Stanford, but he didn’t think he would be able to get away with it today even if he had wanted to. Dan had been assigned to the ticket booth with him.

Dan had been sitting there in mostly silence, looking a little more like an acne-faced bouncer than a greeter. Stanley would have been a little more concerned about sitting next to him like that, but he had come to learn that this was just sort of a natural state for Dan. 

He had been a little afraid to go near him for a while after the golf cart incident. Fortunately, Mabel had pulled Dan aside before Dan could have tried to retaliate and talked to him. Stanley didn’t know what she had said, but it seemed to have worked. Dan had gone back to treating him the same as Stanford - which meant that he still didn’t talk much, but at least wasn’t hostile like most of the teens they had interacted with.

Even if he was a little grumpy about being assigned there without Sixer, he had still decided to give his best effort. Grauntie Mabel had been pretty excited about this whole thing, and he didn’t want to screw it up for her.

Stanley trying not to screw something up usually meant Stanley trying to do as little as possible. So really, between him and Dan, it was a miracle that people kept getting in at all. They were both sort of just taking the money and letting everyone figure it out from there.

Dan abruptly stood after about 10 minutes of this, unintentionally making Stanley feel like more of a shrimp next to him than he had already.

“I’ll be back,” he said, his eyes on someone in the crowd. And all of the sudden Stanley was in charge of the stand on his own.

A few more people made it in without incident before he had a problem.

Two people stepped up together. 

The first was a middle-aged man who looked exactly how Stanley would have pictured a vampire looking. He was abnormally pale with hair that looked to black to be natural on him. He had on a dark suit, and was quite possibly wearing eyeliner. If he hadn’t seen them come together, he wouldn’t have thought that he and the teenage girl he was with even knew each other. She had fluffy, shoulder length ginger hair, glasses, a plush purple turtleneck, and a smile so fixed on her face it was almost creepy.

The man dropped down a $10 bill in front of Stanley and leaned forward against the table

“Hey, Kid. How long is this thing supposed to go on for again? I’ve got better things to do today.”

Stanley leaned back. This guy was an adult, but something about him was reminding Stanley of the edgy teens he and Sixer had learned to avoid back on Glass Shard Beach.

“Get lost if you don’t wanna be here,” he muttered on reflex. Then had to keep himself from slapping a hand over his mouth as his brain caught up with what he had just said.

The man’s eyes narrowed, looking him over. “So, you’re a _Pines_ , huh?”

Usually, Stanley knew what that meant. But this was Gravity Falls, and Grauntie Mabel ran a more honest business than Pa.

He was saved from having to come up with a response by a large, tanned hand coming to rest on the table between them. Dan had returned. 

“Is there a problem here, Mr. Valentino?” Dan’s voice rumbled. Stanley cringed a bit, hoping that he hadn’t gotten back in time to hear had said.

“Hi Dan!” chirped the girl, in a warm, excited tone. Dan gave her a grunt of acknowledgement.

The man stepped back and straightened up so fast he almost fell over. His expression switched over to a smile.

“Hey, if it isn’t Dan! How’s your mom doing?”

“She’s here,” said Dan, straightening up to his full height. “You can go ask her yourself.”

Music started playing from the stage. The girl gasped, and grabbed the man’s arm. 

“Come on, Daddy,” she said, pulling him away. “It’s starting!”

“Alright, alright, I’m coming.” He almost fell over again. “Slow down, Janice.”

Once they were gone, Dan dropped back into his seat. He didn’t say anything else.

…

All in all, Stanford was much happier with his job than Stanley had been with the ticket booth. He got to have a lesson on how all the equipment worked from Maria's grandfather, and he could manage to stay mostly behind the scenes. 

Grauntie Mabel glanced back where he was sitting just behind the stage to check if he was ready. He gave her a thumbs up. They had done sound check earlier, and everything was still set properly.

He could only barely catch the sound of the bell over Soos starting up the fanfare on his keyboard. He looked around. Someone was coming out of the shop door. 

It was the woman that he had remembered seeing at the lake with a boat full of red-haired girls - the one that his uncle had waved aback at. Now that he could finally see her whole body, he could spot the sheathed axe hanging from her belt. Maybe she was a lumberjack. It would make sense in a town like this. He peeked around the stage to see the woman slip in from the side to join the seated audience.

How had she gotten into the Cottage in the first place? Mabel, Maria, and Dan were all outside, and Dipper had decided that he wanted no part of this and left for the day. The more he thought about it, the more he felt sure he remembered Maria locking the door so no one would wander in before they were done.

He wondered if he should tell someone about this, but everyone from the Cottage was busy with the presentation, and he didn't know for sure that it was a problem anyway. Resolving to keep an eye on her and assess the house and store later to see if anything seemed out of place, he turned his attention to the show.

He looked over the crowd. There were a few other familiar faces from the lake. Most disconcertingly, the old woman with the tinfoil hat was here. Maybe that wasn't so bad though - she had been right about the lake monster after all. He just couldn't get that grin she had given Grauntie Mabel out of his head. 

Grauntie Mabel stepped up to center stage as Soos played a fanfare.

"Thank you all for coming," she said. Thankfully, it seemed like he'd gotten the mic volume right. "I'm sure that many you here remember our Wax Museum, and we are as thrilled to bring it back as you are to see it again. But there's no fun in just rehashing the same old thing. This time, we have a new star of the show." 

Soos put on a drumroll. Mabel yanked the cloth off the statue. 

"Here he is, the Man of Mystery himself," the woman he was still keeping an eye on grinned in response to that, "my brother!"

There was some polite applause. 

The statue didn't actually show Dipper as Stanford knew him. This version was younger - 30s, maybe. His hair was light brown like Pa's, but still covered by the familiar brown cap. He had on a brown outdoor jacket over a red shirt, and he had a book tucked under one arm. He was smiling, and he stood a little straighter than Stanford usually saw him stand now.

"I made this statue with my own two hands!" Mabel was saying, raising her fists in the air. "It is covered in my blood, sweat, tears, and other fluids."

The crowd recoiled at that. Stanford remembered seeing her licking the paint brush, so he at least knew that wasn't as bad as bad as people were probably imagining. Still, he hadn't noticed her bleeding on it either, so maybe he had missed something.

"I will now be taking questions," said Mabel.

The old woman from the lake was the first to stand up. "Old, woman Northwest, local crone. Are you able to guarantee that the wax people won't attempt to murder us in the night, and if not, how may I defend myself in their quest for vengeance?"

"Umm, yes!" Grauntie Mabel answered. Honestly, Stanford wasn't sure what she had been expecting when she'd let this woman talk. "Next question!" 

The next person up was a teenage girl with a notepad and long hair tied at the side. "Shandra Jimenez, reporter for the Gravity falls community news blog. Your flier advertised free pizza. Will that still be provided?"

"Pizza will be available after the Q and A is finished," Mabel announced. Maria was beginning to set up the tables behind the crowd.

With the promise of pizza, and a few more quick questions, the event wrapped up. As the people were eating, Stanford could see a young boy with a picture of his pizza slice on his shirt sobbing for joy.

…

Upon his return, Grunkle Dipper quickly disappeared into his office despite Grauntie Mabel's attempts to talk to him about how the event had gone. Then Mabel got annoyed, announced that she was going to hang out with her Wax Brother instead, and dragged the it into the living room with her.

Stanley could dimly hear the television from up in the bathroom. Really, the whole day hadn't been as bad as he had been expecting that morning. Grauntie Mabel had even gotten Maria to save some pizza for them, and as a treat for helping she'd gotten extra snacks and ice cream that only they got to have. 

He had finished brushing his teeth in about ten seconds, but as usual, Stanford was taking his time. Stanley could feel himself starting to get twitchy, so he hopped down from his seat on the rim of the bathtub and went back to their room.

He grabbed the small chunk of wax he'd picked up while they had been watching Grauntie Mabel work off his desk before returning to his spot on the bathtub. Stanford was still brushing his teeth. He picked at the wax while he waited. He had been playing with it last night - shaping it with his fingernails and squishing it once he had realized he could warm it up enough with his hands. He had something that was kind of starting to look like a little person, but also kind of like a dog. He wondered if he should ask Mabel for more of the leftover wax. It was hard to work with it when it was this small.

There was a scream from downstairs that made both of them jump. They looked at each other. 

“Was that Grauntie Mabel?” Stanford asked. Stanley was already on his way to the door. 

They made it downstairs to find her and their uncle in the living room. Both had their backs to the boys. Dipper stood behind her, bent down with a hand on her shoulder. They were looking down at something on the floor.

They both seemed okay. Or at least, Grunkle Dipper seemed okay. If Grauntie Mabel had been hurt Stanley figured he would have been doing more about it. He edged around them to see what was going on.

There was a body lying on the floor. Or at least, most of a body. 

The figure of Wax Dipper was lying on its back on the carpet, head sliced off at the neck and nowhere to be seen. 

The clock chimed. 

"My expert handcrafting," Grauntie Mabel moaned. "Besmirched. Besmirched!"

“I’ll call Candy and Grenda,” said Dipper.

…

The two officers that showed up to the house introduced themselves to the boys as Sheriff Chiu and Deputy Grendinator. In Stanley’s experience, cops showing up to the house never meant anything good. Mabel, however, took one look at them as Dipper led them into the living room before yelling, “My girls!” and tackling them both in a hug. They hugged back. 

Stanley had actually not been aware until that day that women could come in Grendinator’s size. She was as tall as Dipper and definitely a lot more jacked. She had mascara, a little mole on her cheek, and a voice like a foghorn full of gravel. Chiu was pretty much the opposite. A little Asian woman not much taller than he was, she spoke in a soft, heavily accented tone. Her grey-black hair was swept up into a bun, and she wore a thick pair of glasses. 

Looking back, he sort of remembered seeing the two of them at the ticket table that afternoon. They hadn't been wearing their uniforms then. 

Mabel was sitting sitting on the couch stroking Waddles, who was nuzzling into her leg. If his small tusks were bothering her, she didn't show it. Dipper sat on her other side.

"Who would do something like this?" he asked.

"Don't worry," thundered Grendinator. "We'll hunt them down!"

"I have already found a clue!" Chiu called from behind the couch. The boys hurried around to look.

Chiu was pulling an axe out from under the couch. It looked sharp enough to be able to take down a wax dude, at least.

"Good job, Candy!" said Grendinator. "Check for fingerprints."

Sheriff Chiu pulled out her kit. Stanley and Stanford watched with interest (for very different reasons) as she swept black powder across the surface. “There are no fingerprints.”

"What!" exclaimed Stanford. "How can there be no fingerprints?"

"Maybe whoever did it wore gloves," Dipper.

"Wait, I found one!" Chiu's shout made them all jump up, but then she giggled. "Oh, silly. That's just my fingerprint."

It was a bit of a novel experience to the twins – and to Stanley in particular – that no one seemed to be even _considering_ that they were involved. And for once, they actually weren't..

The officers took Dipper's place next to Mabel on the couch. They spent the next few minutes trying to cheer her up. 

"Don't worry," said Chiu. "You can make new Dipper"

"A better Dipper." added Grendinator.

“Side note,” Dipper chimed in, “we may have just experienced a home invasion. So…that’s something that might be good to talk about.”

…

Eventually, Dipper and the two officers checked around the house for signs of a break in and the boys were ushered to bed. Stanley had thought that Sixer would want to stay up and theorize, but he went to sleep almost right away.

When Stanley woke up the next morning, there were several seconds where he tried to puzzle through whether or not the whole thing had been a dream. He looked over at Stanford's bed. 

His brother had woken up first, as usual, but for the first time in days Stanley found him without the journal and his notebook. He was just sitting up, silently staring at the wall. Stanford glanced over at him. Their eyes met, but he looked away without saying anything.

This felt weird, and he had no idea why. He tried to get a conversation going.

"That was crazy last night, huh.

Stanford didn't reply.

"Who do you think did it?" he pressed on, and when he still didn't get an answer he kept going. "The only people in the house was us and Dipper and Mabel, and if we didn't do it, then-"

" _Did_ we do it?"

Stanford's voice had caught him off guard. When he finally processed when he had said, Stanley felt himself go cold.

"Of-of course we didn't do it. I was with you the whole time, and-"

"No, you weren't" Stanford said. He moved to sit on the edge of the bed. 

There had been that minute in the bathroom last night, where he had left Stanford alone just before everything had happened. Knowing what his brother was thinking did nothing to ease the sharp sting in him. He didn't. He _wouldn't_ \- not to something that Grauntie Mabel had worked so hard on.

He stood, one hand squeezing tight on the bed frame. "It wasn't me."

"I-I know you wouldn't do something like that on _purpose_ ," Stanford wasn't meeting his eyes anymore, and he stumbled a bit over his words, "But you've said that you didn't do things before, and I just want to _know_. I won't say anything..."

Stanley didn't know what to say to that. 

He remembered the feeling of having Pa's gold chain burning a hole in his pocket while he let Stanford lead them on a wild goose chase looking for it. He knew that Stanford was thinking of that too. "Oh come on, Sixer. You've gotta believe me.

Stanford didn't say anything. 

"I really didn't do it this time!"

Stanford didn't say anything.

Even Stanley had to admit, stuff like this usually was his fault. But he was innocent this time. And he couldn't stand the thought that Stanford still thought it was him when he was _innocent_.

He walked to the other bed and stood in front of him. 

"We'll prove it," he said. We'll figure out who did it. You wanted a mystery, right? Well now we've got one." 

Sixer looked back at him for a few seconds, searching his face.

"Okay."

…

Within the hour, Stanford had set up a suspect board in the taped-off crime scene. For some reason the cops from last night hadn't taken the axe with them (maybe small-town protocol was a little more lax), so he set that out on the table to examine as needed. He'd brought his magnifying glass too. He had no idea if it would actually help or not. It just felt right for the situation. 

He’d already been able to get rid of most of his suspicion towards Stanley. They’d found the footprints almost right away. They were an adult’s size. Possibly not a very well-off adult. They seemed to have a hole in them.

"So, here's what we know," he began, and started pacing. Stanley stood up straighter. 

"At around 10:15 last night, Grauntie Mabel was sitting on the couch watching TV and got up to go to the bathroom. We were," he took a quick glance back at Stanley, "upstairs, and Grunkle Dipper was in his office with the door closed. The sounds from the TV might have covered up sounds of a break-in, but there were no signs of forced entry discovered in the official investigation. This means that the perpetrator is either highly skilled, or had some other access to the house."

He pointed at the suspect board. "I've created a list of people that either had access or motive."

Most of the photographs he had had been collected from grainy security cam footage. Still, you had to work with what was available. 

Stanley squinted at the board. “Why is Grunkle Dipper on here?”

The picture had come from one of the piles of printed but not-yet-scrapbooked photos that Grauntie Mabel had lying around the house. She had taken it after he had fallen asleep with his head leaning back against the counter. 

Stanford fidgeted a little. “Well, he was in the house. _And_ we know that he didn’t like the wax figures. We’ve got means and motive for him. It doesn’t really feel like we’re being thorough if I leave him off.”

He wasn't too thrilled about putting him up there either. Dipper had been acting very supportive towards Mabel last night, and he didn't like the thought of that having been faked. Still, Stanford couldn't deny that he was a legitimate suspect. 

Stanley was shifting uncomfortably. He didn't seem to feel any better about this than Stanford did. 

"I dunno," he said. "I don't think Dipper's got it in him." 

Stanford thought for a minute. He pulled the picture down. 

"Okay, we'll come back to him if not of our other leads go anywhere. Here's my next top suspect." 

He pointed to the blurry photo of the woman from yesterday. 

"I saw her in the store and I'm not sure how she got in there. "And," he pointed to her waist. "I know that she knows how to use an axe. I just don't have motive, but there could be something there that we just don't know about.

Stanley looked a lot more enthusiastic about this one.

"Great! So, where do we find her." 

"I don't actually know who she is," Stanford admitted. "We're going to have to ask around." 

Stanley thought for a minute, then grabbed the picture. 

"Hey, Maria!" he yelled, running out. 

He came back a little later with the name _Wendy Corduroy_ and the location of a bar they might find her at. They added the photo, the axe, the Journal (just in case) into Stanford's bag and headed out. 

They met Grunkle Dipper as they were leaving the yard. He had gone out early that morning again, and was just coming back from the path into the forest now. Stanford found himself feeling suddenly glad that he had taken his picture off the board. At least he wouldn't see that he was a suspect when he went back in.

“Where are you two going with that axe?” Dipper asked warily.

“Oh, don’t worry,” said Stanford. “It’s just part of the investigation. We're going to track down whoever stole your head.”

“We’re going to Skull Fracture,” Stanley interjected.

“Yeah that’s…not better than what I was imagining. Why exactly are you going to the worst biker joint in town?”

"We're looking for that lumberjack woman," Stanford said, then gave a quick recap of why she was a suspect. Grunkle Dipper looked taken aback when they started talking, but by the time they were done his expression had morphed into a grin.

“You know what?” he said, “Sure, go talk to the lumberjack woman.”

…

Their first attempt to get inside - which consisted of Stanley marching up and demanding that the bouncer let them in - didn't work out. They ended up looking around the back of the building until they found a window with a busted screen and a trash can they could maneuver over to stand on. The two of them found themselves tumbling into the men's room. Thankfully the only witness was a heavily tattooed man at the sink who was too drunk and confused to do anything as they rushed past him. 

Stanford could understand Grunkle Dipper's reaction when they told him they were coming here a little better now. Chunks of plaster were missing from the wall, and most of the decorations consisted of busted picture frames and animal heads. There was an active fight happening in the corner and almost nobody was paying attention to it. 

"If this is where she comes for fun, we might need to be careful," he told Stanley. His brother nodded. 

"Hey, who brought their kids here?" a gruff voice called from by the counter. 

The man sitting there was big and barrel-chested, and was wearing enough camo on to probably either be a soldier or a soldier wannabe. He was with a guy that had dark skin, buzzed hair, and a t-shirt with a poster for _The Mummy_ printed on it

The man was still looking at them, so Stanford decided that they might as well try to make use of the attention. "We're looking for-"

"This ain't a daycare or a lost and found. Get out of here, runt."

Stanley stepped forward. "Hey, he's just trying to ask you something, jerk!"

Soldier man glared at him and got to his feet. "What did you say to me?" he asked.

This was escalating quickly. Stanford grabbed on to Stanley shoulder and backed up with him a step.

“What is _that_?” the other guy said suddenly. Stanford looked over at him to discover, to his horror, the man staring at his right hand. He quickly stuffed his fists into his pockets.

“Hey, don’t be like that, kid,” the man shuffled closer on the edge of his seat. “Show us your hands.”

“What is going on over here?”

The woman they had come to find was standing about five feet away, one hand on her hip as she surveyed the scene in front of her. Stanford didn’t know if he should be dismayed that she was getting the chance to make the first move or relieved at the interruption. One red eyebrow went up when she noticed Stanley and Stanford.

"I'm just showing these two the door Wendy," Soldier man told her. He advanced a step. 

Wendy Corduroy came closer, looking them over. For a moment, Stanford was worried they were being surrounded. She didn't look angry though.

“Ah, lay off Rodger. They’re just kids.”

“You didn’t hear them mouthin’ off! I was just-”

Almost quicker than they could keep track of, Wendy lunged forward and was dragging the man down to her eye level by his collar. 

“Maybe you didn’t hear me. I _said_ , they’re kids. Back off.”

Her voice kept its relaxed tone, but Rodger blanched. He staggered back to his seat as soon as she let him go. 

“Fine,” he said. “If you feel like babysitting, they’re all yours.”

They boys looked up at her. 

She gave them a little wave over her shoulder to follow her and led them to a table at the back. 

Wendy plopped down in one of the chairs at a beaten-up round table. She gestured for them to sit too.

“Man, if you two are spending your free time coming to dives like this, then your aunt and uncle need to start keeping a closer eye on you.”

He was taken aback by that for a moment, but then thought it through. She probably seen them at least twice by now, and it seemed like she knew Dipper at least.

Stanford worked up his nerve. “If it’s so bad, then what are you doing here?”

Someone went crashing through a table behind them. Wendy raised her hands in a shrug. “What can I say? They’re my kind of people. And what are _you_ doing here?”

Stanford sat in one of the other chairs. Stanley followed suit. “Actually, we were hoping to talk to you.”

“Oh really?” She put her feet up on the table and her hands behind her head. Stanford snuck a glance at the bottom of her shoes – no holes. “Lay it on me, lil’ dude.”

It was at that moment that Stanford realized he had been more prepared for a reconnaissance mission that an interrogation. He certainly had not been expecting her to be this cooperative. 

"I saw you in the shop during the Wax Museum reopening yesterday," he said, and then immediately regretted it. That was not where he had meant to start.

"Yeah?" she cocked her head a little as she looked at him. 

Might as well roll with it now. "How did you get inside?" She put her feet back on the ground, reached into her pockets and, with a jingle, pulled out a ring of keys. She searched through them until she found a slightly-rusted golden on, holding it up for them to see.

"How’s you get that?" Stanley asked. 

She tucked her keys away. "I got on the payroll."

Well, that was definitely not what Stanford had been expecting. Thankfully, she decided to elaborate without any further questions. 

"It was a long time ago, of course. It was my first real job when I was a teenager. Back in those days the place was just getting started. We only sold stuff that Mabel made, and it was just open when she was in town in the summer. I offered to give my key back when I quit, but they let me keep it. I just let myself in yesterday to use the washroom. Was that all you wanted to ask.”

Stanford wasn't sure what to say next. He looked at Stanley. 

"There's been a murder," said Stanley, "and we're looking at you lady."

To their surprise, she laughed. “Oh yeah. I heard about Dipper losing his head.” She jerked her chin in the direction of the axe handle poking out of his backpack. “Is that what did the job?”

She stretched out a hand, clearly looking to take it. Stanford hesitated, but he supposed that she'd been helpful so far. A little hesitant, he pulled the axe out and passed it over. Wendy looked down at his hands as he did it, but unlike the men at the bar she didn’t seem phased by the extra fingers.

She gave the axe a bit of a twirl in her hand and looked it over.

“Okay, see, this is a left-handed axe. I swing with my right.” She ran her fingers around the handle and inspected the blade. “It’s not a very _good_ axe either. You could probably get like, halfway through one decent-sized pine with this before it would start to fall apart. I get why you might have thought of me when you found it, but I wouldn’t bother using this. Or be dumb enough to leave it behind at the crime scene, for that matter.”

She passed it back to Stanley and leaned back in her seat.

“You guys should’ve just asked Dan. He could have told you that much.”

“You know Dan?” Stanley asked.

Wendy raised a finger. “First off: I know you two are from the city, but in a town this size everybody knows each other. You should probably get used to that. Second,” she raised another finger, “I absolutely know Dan. I _made_ him, after all.”

Stanford decided to leave it there. The realization that they were interrogating _Dan’s Mom_ kind of took the wind out of his sails.

…

They spent the rest of the day following the left-handed lead. Unfortunately, it didn't get them anywhere. After hours of observing people who had been at the re-opening, the only left left-handed person that they were able to find was a the most awkward teenager they had ever encountered. He not only had no motive (but did seem to have cat whiskers, or something?) but they didn't even think that he would have been able to even manage the break in even if he had wanted to.

By evening they were back at their suspect board. 

"Alright, we need a new direction," said Stanford. "Thoughts?"

"Soos," said Stanley, "what's his deal?"

"Isn't he their friend? why would he want to do this?"

"Well...he really likes Dipper, right? Maybe he...I dunno, wanted the head so he...uh," Stanley stopped. "Never mind, I hate this.”

The rest of their discussion got them nowhere. Stanford even ended up pulling out the Journal to see if there was anything there that could fit, but they ended up eliminating all of his suggestions form there too. 

Eventually, they realized that it had gotten very late and no one had shown up to tell them to go to bed. They gathered the important things back up and went looking to see what Mabel and Dipper were doing. They found them dragging Wax Queen Elizabeth into the parlor room.

"Shouldn't you two be in bed?" Dipper asked. Stanley chose to ignore that. Dipper was probably supposed to be in bed too, but he had a cup of coffee on the go instead. 

"What are going on? Stanford asked. Stanley peeked in side. They had all of the others in here too - including the headless Dipper, which was lying on the table. 

They followed them inside as they finished maneuvering Her Majesty.

"Well," said Mabel, "we weren't sure if whoever got Dipper was going to come back for the rest of them, so we figured we'd move them all up here to keep a better eye on them"

"By the way," Dipper set his coffee down on the mantle, "Did you get anything from the axe?"

"Oh yeah," said Mabel," I heard that you two were on the case. How are things going?"

"Not well," Stanford admitted.

Dipper rested a hand on his head until he looked back up. "Hey, if it makes you feel any better, the police haven't found anything new either.

That didn't make Stanley feel better. The longer they went without finding out who did it, the more likely Grauntie Mabel would be to start wondering about Stanley too.

"Sometimes you just run into dead ends," Dipper was saying. "You've just got to keep looking. You should try to get some rest, and if you're up to it, maybe things will look a little fresher in the morning. 

"Do you really think so?" Stanford asked.

“Hey,” said Grauntie Mabel, slinging an arm around Dipper’s shoulders and tugging him down to her. “You two are looking at the _original_ Mystery Twins. He knows what he’s talking about.”

Stanley looked up at her, startled.

“Wait, you guys are twins?” he blurted out.

There was an abrupt silence.

Mabel’s arm slowly slipped off of Dipper. She looked up at him. Dipper had straightened up, eyes darting between Stanley and Stanford’s faces. 

Stanley could tell that asking that had been a mistake, but he wasn’t sure why. Maybe they were surprised that it had taken so long for Stanley to clue in. But it couldn’t have been _that_ dumb of a question, or Stanford would have figured it out already and mentioned it to him.

“So Filbrick just…didn’t tell you _anything_ about us before he put you on a plane to live with us for an entire summer, huh.”

Grauntie Mabel smacked Grunkle Dipper’s.

He swiveled around to face her, “Oh come on Mabel. That’s pretty basic information.”

His voice came out hard, incredulous. Stanley took an involuntary step back. He felt Stanford shift a little closer.

“Dipper.”

“You can’t tell me you don’t think that was _relevant_ here,” he waved his hand in their direction without looking away from his sister. “If he didn’t think even that much was worth mentioning, then did they even-”

_“Dipper.”_

Mabel’s hiss made him stop talking. He jerked slightly, then his expression just went neutral. 

He looked back over at them. His shoulders slumped a little as whatever he saw there seemed to take the rest of the sudden anger.

“Sorry guys.” His voice came out much softer this time. He glanced over at his sister, who was glaring at him with her arms crossed over her chest. He looked back at Stanley. “Yeah, we’re twins.”

At that, Mabel let her glare go. She looked at the boys and added. “I’m still the oldest, though.”

Dipper choked a little on a laugh, and any tension that was left in the room disappeared.

“Five minutes. _Five_ minutes, and she’s never let me forget it.”

Stanly stayed quiet. He didn’t really understand what had just happened, or what _Pa_ had to do with it. He didn’t really want to bring it back up again. 

“I’m going to go get some fresh air,” said Dipper. “You two head up to bed soon.”

Mabel followed him out as he left.

Mabel and Mason. The matching names probably should have been more of a giveaway. He’d never been totally sure about which of them was older, either. He kind of did wish they had been told before they had come. They were Pines Twins too, and in a way, that was…nice to think about.

Stanford didn’t seem to know what to say either, so Stanley looked around to try to find something to talk about. His eyes landed on the stature of the one that had always creeped him out the most – the crazy-looking lady with the old clothes and-

Stanley frowned. 

“Hey,” he said to Stanford. “Didn’t that one used to have an axe?”

“L-” Sixer didn’t get out whatever he was going to say. Stanley watched as the colour drained from his face and his eyes bugged open wide. Then he was rushing over to Wax Dipper’s feet.

Stanley followed him. There was a hole in the bottom of the shoe, and suddenly he remembered Grauntie Mabel saying something about that while she had been making it. 

“No fingerprints!” Stanford hissed at him. “Stanley, the culprits are-”

“Right behind you!”

…

“…but then, your uncle convinced her to close up shop.”

Stanley was starting to get a little tired of Wax Sherlock, who had apparently been trying to _actually off Dipper_ – yammering on.

“…and now that you know our secret, _you must die._ ”

Then their eyes rolled back up in their heads and they started slowly coming at them.

The two of them backed up until they hit the wall. He didn’t think they’d be able to run at this point – the wax people were between them and the door. He pushed Sixer a little behind him and found himself wishing that he had his brass knuckles with him, or at least his gloves. 

The big guy with the sword started swinging it towards them. On reflex, Stanley closed his eyes.

There was a bang. 

“RRRREEEEEEEEE”

The wax army was scattered like bowling pins as a massive pig came barreling into the side of the group. Genghis Kahn went headfirst into the fireplace and splattered back out in globs. 

In the ensuing chaos, Stanley yanked back the axe and gave it a wild swing. He caught Sherlock Holmes around just above the knees and his upper half went tumbling to the floor. 

Stanford seemed okay for the moment. He was near the fireplace with Waddles standing in front of him and looking ready for a fight. Stanley went back to swinging. 

There was a scream. Stanford had made it to Dipper’s coffee on the mantle and flung it at Nixon. Stanley managed to slice Shakespeare in half before he was caught off guard by a grab at his face by a disembodied arm. Then the arm flopped down, and he was able to see Stanford tossing a matching head into the fire. 

Things got a little hazy after that. Stanford was running around with a hot poker, collecting as many heads as he could. He was pretty sure he saw Waddles just straight-up squash one. 

Finally, all was quiet. Except, of course, for the panting breaths of two boys and a pig. 

“Well, that was disturbing,” said Stanley. “Are we done?”

A hand on the ground twitched. They both screamed until Waddles walked over and stomped on it. 

“Help me melt the rest,” Stanford told him. They spent the next few minutes tossing limbs into the fire as Waddles grunted and nuzzled at them until they took a break to pet him. 

“Are you two still- what the heck happened here?”

Dipper and Mabel were standing at the doorway, staring in at the wax-splattered room.

This probably didn’t look great. 

There was a moment where Stanley considered trying to blame the pig. He decided against it. They kind of owed Waddles a favor, and Grauntie Mabel might not buy it. 

He was tired, so in the end he just looked at Grunkle Dipper and said, “You were right. The wax people were evil.”

Dipper turned to his sister. “Told you so.”

Their aunt and uncle stepped cautiously into the room. 

“Well,” said Mabel, “I guess that settles that.”

“What do you mean?” Stanford asked. 

She signed, and nudged a stray foot with her toes. “Oh, I wasn’t quite sure what to do about the Wax Museum anyway. Losing Wax Dipper kind of took the fun out of it, anyway.”

This was something Stanley could fix. Sherlock Holmes had dropped the head when Stanley had gotten him with the axe, and it had rolled off somewhere.

He looked around until he spotted it under the table and held it up.

“Look what we found!”

Grauntie Mabel gasped, covering her mouth with her hands, and suddenly Stanley wondered if this had been a bad idea. What if she just thought he’d been hiding it somewhere? 

She stepped closer and reached down. Stanley lifted the head up higher so she could take it from him…

…and found himself being picked up instead. 

She had caught him in a hug so tight it was kind of hard to breathe and lifted him off the ground. 

“Thank you, thank you, thank you!” she squealed. Stanley felt his cheeks get hot, and he cautiously let one hand slip away from the head to grip at her sweater. 

“You guys are cleaning up in here though tomorrow, right?” said Dipper, “because there is a lot of clean-up that needs to happen here.”

Mabel set Stanley down. 

“On the bright side,” she peeled a solidifying chunk of wax off the floor. “Maybe I can make something new with all this.”

“Yeah,” said Dipper. 

Once she had left the room with the head, he leaned down to the boys and lowered his voice.

“I will give you each 20 dollars if you make sure the rest of this wax disappears in the morning”

They stared at him for a moment.

“30,” Stanley countered.

“Deal.”

They watched him as he left.

“Should have said 40,” Stanley muttered. The old man would have paid it too. He’d agreed way too easily when Stanley had upped the price. 

…

Once they had finally made it to bed, Stanford had a thought. 

“Stanley?” he called into the dark. 

“Yeah?”

“I don’t remember getting rid of Sherlock Holmes’ head. Did you get that one?”

“Eh, maybe,” Stanley was already half asleep. “It’s probably fine,”

It probably was. Stanford drifted off, to drowsy to be bothered by the distant, rhythmic thumping in the vents. 

…

_Wkh uhdo pbvwhub lv zkb wkhuh zhuhq'w dqb ilqjhusulqwv rq wkh dah wkh iluvw wlph durxqg diwu olwwoh Slqh Wuhh dqg Vkrrwlqj Vwdu kdqgohg lw doo gdb_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is 9143 words long. I am very tired.


	5. 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Grauntie Mabel gets a new boyfriend/stalker

" _The tiger was badly injured in the explosion. But we repaired him... **with a fist**_."

"Maria?" asked Stanford. "Is this just what Gravity falls TV is?"

"I hope so," said Stanley. He cheered as Tigerfist punched himself in the face. "This is the greatest thing I ever seen, and I once saw a beaver with a chainsaw."

The two of them were sitting on the couch with Maria (who was probably supposed to be working, but no one seemed to actually care). She shushed them as the commercials started. 

" _Are you completely miserable_?"

This one was going for the jugular right from the start, apparently. The voice coming from the screen sounded like a kid, squeaky and layered over with a sickeningly sweet southern twang. 

Stanley squinted at the TV. "Who the heck is Gideon, and why should I care?"

" _He's a psychic_."

"Oh," said both boys together, immediately losing interest. Maria was still fixated on the screen. 

Stanley hopped down off the couch. "I'm going to get something to eat. Call be when the tiger’s back on."

Mabel popped into the doorway and was heading down to the couch before he could make it up. She took his spot between Stanford and Maria. "Is that one of Gideon's commercials?"

Stanley stopped and turned back around. "You heard of this guy?"

"Everyone in town has," Mabel told him. "I've been wanting to get to one of his shows." She turned to look at Maria. "You in?”

Maria was in the middle of agreeing when Stanford cut her off.

"Grauntie Mabel, you don't really believe in this stuff, do you?"

"What do you mean?"

"That he's...you know, psychic?"

And wow, she was she suddenly much closer to his face than he had been expecting or prepared for.

"Do you _not_ believe in this stuff?" she asked, poking him in the forehead.

He rubbed the spot as he answered. "I believe that there are people out there with abilities we could classify as 'psychic'. I don't think that any of those people are on the ones you see on TV." 

She blew a raspberry. "How can you be so sure about that?"

Because he was the son of Caryn Pines. But it didn't feel right to say that.

She sat back when he didn't say anything. "Well, _I_ want to go. It's supposed to be a good show, at least."

...

The next day, Stanley and Stanford found themselves having a dubious staring contest with the eye on top of the Tent of Telepathy. 

Stanley still felt like he would rather be doing pretty much anything else, but they hadn't been able to talk Grauntie Mabel and Maria out of going, and he was pretty sure that they were going to get scammed if they let them go alone. Besides, maybe they could steal a few ideas for Ma.

A boy wearing a blue suit (which reminded Stanley of those creepy ventriloquist dummies that they'd had at the pawn shop a while back) was holding up a bag out front. People dropped cash in on their way through the door. 

Stanley had to admit, that wasn't a bad setup. 

"Step right up folks!" called the kid, in the same voice as the commercial. "Welcome to the Tent of Telepathy!"

Stanley eyed him again as Mabel put money in for the group. The round face and the pig nose weren’t doing the dummy look any favors. He was probably lucky he lived all the way in Gravity Falls. Kid didn't look like he'd last a day in Jersey.

The inside of the tent had bench seating. They ended up in the middle row, with Mabel next to the aisle and Stanley next to her. 

"You're more likely to get dragged into the show if you sit there." Sixer told her.

She gasped, putting her palms on her cheeks. "You really think so? Maria, are you getting pumped?"

Maria didn't answer. Mabel had to call her name a few more times before she got a distracted, "Oh, yes, yes…"

She was staring at the other side of the tent with narrowed eyes. Stanley had never seen that expression on her before. A woman with frizzy brown curls was sweeping there. He could sort of make out that there was a name tag from where he was, but not what it said.

The lights dimmed. Mabel poked him. "It's starting!"

Spotlights swiveled around the room and centered on the curtain. A looming shadow approached, before the curtain squeaked open to reveal...

Actually, Stanley wasn't quite sure what he was looking at. The guy on stage had on a light blue suit that had matched the boy's, but it was topped with the most ridiculous poof of white hair he had ever seen. It was an older guy - late 50s maybe, but it was hard to make out. He had on a cape (a _cape_ ) and something was glinting around his neck. 

“What do you think that bit of bling’s worth?” he whispered to Stanford.

He got a shove on his shoulder in response. “It’s probably fake.”

"Hello America!" Gideon had a southern accent too, and the way he talked reminded Stanley of the preacher he had watched on TV back home for a few minutes before the family had collectively decided to change the channel. "My name is Big Gideon!" 

The audience cheered. 

"Ladies, and Gentlemen, it is such a gift to have y'all here tonight! Such a gift. Now, I feel a vision coming on. I predict that you will all say, 'ooh'"

He clapped his hands. White doves flew out of his hair, and the audience 'oohed'

Stanley wondered how he'd managed to keep them in there for so long without them crapping on his head.

Then a whole _song and dance_ _routine_ broke out, which was absolutely more than Stanley had signed up for. At least he got to see some old ladies in the audience mauling each other when he tossed the cape down.

“Hey, how did…” he heard Stanford say. He looked over. His brother was standing, shooting bewildered looks between his feet and the stage.

Stanley was standing too. When had that happened?

The song went on. The people were eating it up – including Mabel. She was clapping along to the beat with the rest of the crowd, ‘ooh’ing and ‘ah’ing at some of the most blatant cold reading that he'd ever seen. 

"How did he do that?" she whispered when he guessed her name, which was literally written on her sweater. Stanley and Stanford exchanged a look, sinking back down to their seats. They had been right to be worried. 

She was still in awe by the time they were finally allowed to start leaving.

“Man, people in this town are easy marks,” Stanley muttered to Stanford when they had made it back outside.

Grauntie Mabel heard them. “Oh, come on, you’ve got to admit, that was a fun show. Besides, did you see his hair? It was like,” she swept her hands back over her head, “woosh! Do you think Dipper will let me try that style on him?”

“You should ask him,” said Stanley. 

They didn’t notice the man in the tent opening watching them as they got back in the car. 

…

The doorbell was ringing. 

The boys, who were sprawled out together on the couch, didn’t move. Stanley kind of just hoped that whoever it was would eventually just go away. It was probably just another tourist who wasn’t paying enough attention to realize that the store was on the other side. 

The doorbell rang again.

“Can someone get that?” Dipper yelled from upstairs. Apparently, he didn’t feel up to doing it either. 

They looked at each other. There was a quick, silent game of Rock, Paper, Scissors.

“I got it!” Stanley yelled back, after Sixer’s paper came out victorious. He dragged himself up.

Upon opening the door, he was greeted with the sight of a wall of blue and rhinestones. He had to tilt his head almost all the way back before he made it to the top of the imposing white hair. 

Big Gideon let out a jolly chuckle that made the hairs on the back of Stan’s neck stand on end. 

“Well hey there, little fella!” he said, with an ungodly amount of enthusiasm. “I’m lookin’ for that sweet auntie of yours. Is she around?”

Stanley stared at him for a moment.

“No,” he said. 

Then he closed the door. 

For a few seconds he thought it had worked. But then the doorbell was ringing again, and Grauntie Mabel was coming down the hall, brushing the glitter from her latest project off her sweater.

“Who is it?” she asked.

“Someone selling something.” But it was too late. She was already opening the door.

She gasped when she saw who was standing there. “It’s big ol’ you!”

Gideon gave a slightly uncomfortable sounding laugh. Getting the door in his face seemed to have thrown off his game a bit. “Yes, my song is quite catchy,”

“It’s okay, Stanley,” she said to him as she pushed the door open wider. “I don’t mind _celebrity_ visitors.”

“Don’t worry your pretty little head about it, Ma’am,” Gideon stepped inside. “I’m a single father myself. I know how shy kids can be.”

He probably wouldn’t be able to get away with kicking the man in the shins.

Stanford had gotten curious enough to come and see what was happening. He stood back with Stanley as they watched them talk.

“Now, I know we haven’t formally met,” Gideon was saying to their aunt, “but after yesterday’s performance I just couldn’t get your laugh out of my head!”

Mabel demonstrated the laugh in question. It wasn’t the weirdest sound Stanley had ever heard her make, but Sideshow here was definitely buttering her up for something. 

“Oh, what a delight! I said to myself, now _there’s_ a kindred spirit. Someone who ‘preciates the…sparkly things in life.”

Based on the look he gave her after that last line, either this was leading to a bribe or he was trying to rope her into doing a bank heist with him.

“That’s totally-” Mabel cut off mid-sentence. She sneezed. Apparently, she hadn’t brushed the glitter off well enough, because the sneeze sent a shimmering cloud bursting out of her hair. She was standing right under the lightbulb, and the light made it glow a bit as it drifted down around her.

Gideon was staring at her. 

“Enchanting,” he whispered. And now this was getting officially uncomfortable to stand and watch.

“Now, I was really hoping for the chance to talk a bit more. Us little local businesses have got to stick together, after all. What do you say we step away from here and chat? Perhaps in my… _dressing room?_ ”

She gasped and jabbed him in the stomach. “Absolutely.”

He laughed, and then doubled over slightly with a groan. If her pokes were anything like her high-fives, then Stanley could understand why.

…

It took Dipper a few hours to realize his sister was gone and emerge from his office to make them spaghetti for dinner. The three of them were just sitting down when they heard the side door open.

“Oh, ther-” Dipper got a good look at her as she came into the kitchen. “What were you up to?”

Stanley was wondering the same thing. Her hair was now in poofy ringlets. She had on more makeup than Stanley had ever seen on one face and her fingernails glinted in the light. They had become pink with embedded stones and extended almost to claws.

“Makeovers,” she said. She leaned back against the kitchen counter.

Dipper was trying to reach the newspaper that had somehow wound up under the table that morning. “So, you were out with your friends?”

“No, I went out with Gideon.”

Dipper gave up on the paper. "Gideon? You mean, that psychic you tried to take me to go see with you?"

“Yeah. I found people to go with me even though _someone_ ,” she poked him in the chest, “was being a wet blanket about it.”

He waved away her hand. "Yeesh, be careful with those fingers. They look like they could do some damage.”

She wiggled her fingers in the air. "I know, right? Gideon's got this whole crew of people for stuff like this. Why don’t _we_ have a crew of people for stuff like this?"

Dipper seemed to be choosing to ignore that last bit. "Of course he does."

She put her hands on her hips. “What’s your problem with him anyway?”

“Mabel, I don’t trust anyone who’s hair,” he pointed to his own, “is bigger than his head.”

That sounded like a reasonable argument to Stanley.

“Oh, come on, Dipper. He’s really nice. I had fun today.”

“Mabel, is this another new boyfriend? I mean, I know you’re not usually single for this long, but really? _That_ guy?”

That was the moment that Stanley realized that they had sort of forgotten that he and Stanford were sitting at the table with them.

Grauntie Mabel started assembling her own plate of spaghetti as she answered. “Of course not, we’re just friends.” 

Her brother stared at her; arms folded. 

“Really _,_ ” she said as she sat down to eat.

…

To Stanford, discovering Tyrone Alcor’s _Guide to the Unexplained_ series had been a literary revelation second only to finding the Journal. 

There were five books published so far, with a sixth on the way. Each chapter focused on a different cryptid, and offered means of identifying and dealing with everything from poltergeists and pixies to krakens and yeti sub-species. 

Some of the series’ claims (such as the suggestion in book 2 that Mothman had a gambling problem) seemed fairly ridiculous. This resulted in it being typically classified in the children’s fantasy genre – a great injustice in his mind, but one that thankfully allowed him to find the stained, donated copy of Book 1 in their otherwise lackluster school library on one of the days last year when Stanley had been suspended and Stanford had needed somewhere to hide during lunch break.

It was more than just fantasy. He could sense it in the writing: the mix of scientific classifications and storytelling, the specifications on whether the chapter was based on a personal encounter or the secondhand information that Alcor was painstakingly able to gather, and the straightforward way in which it was delivered. Reading it, Stanford knew that the series was not meant to entertain, but to advise. 

But what had drawn him in most of all was the feeling he had gotten on the first day he’d found it, after he’d miraculously managed to sneak out past Crampelter and his gang, raced home, and gotten so absorbed in reading it up on his bed that not even Stanley had been able to distract him. 

It was the feeling that he was reading the words of someone that understood.

He felt the same way about the Author of the Journal, and his awe of the Author strengthened his awe of Alcor. The Journal was _real_ in a way that he had been able to personally confirm. It was also very consistent with the _Guide_. Some of the same creatures appeared in both, and while there were some differences in how they were presented, for the most part they seemed to have the same interpretations of the cryptids they depicted. Many of these interpretations were ones that he had never seen in any other lore. He had known from personal experience that Alcor’s depiction of the Jersey Devil was accurate, but it was also accurate to the mainstream mythology about the creature. But there were other things that couldn’t be explained that easily. 

He flipped between the Unicorn sections of the Journal and Book 1 while he sat with Stanley in _New Fort Stan_ (which was basically the curtained off area at the back of the attic bedroom with a lamp and some pillows that they had pulled inside). Neither author seemed that fond of unicorns. They also both insisted that while there were magical properties to their bodies, the only real power that the unicorns themselves could use was the ability to make their horns glow and play terrible music along with the ability to leave a trail of sparkles everywhere. That seemed much too specific to be just coincidence. If the Author had discovered this from meeting a unicorn, then it stood to reason that Alcor had discovered this from meeting a unicorn too.

He barely noticed when the rhythmic thumping of the ball that Stanley had been bouncing against the wall stopped. 

“Hey, Sixer?”

“Yeah?” he answered, absently. He didn’t stop reading. 

“What d’you think the deal is with that Gideon guy?”

This was so off track from where Stanford’s mind had been that he felt like his brain was rebooting just to understand the question. He finally looked up from the book.

Stanley was laying on the floor next to him, fiddling with the ball. Stanford shrugged. “What do you mean?”

“I mean…what do you think his game is? What does he want?”

Stanford was probably the worst possible person to have this conversation with. “Uh…to date Grauntie Mabel, I guess? At least, that’s what Grunkle Dipper thinks.”

Stanley went back to bouncing the ball – harder this time, and still without getting up. “I don’t like him.”

Stanford’s head was still half on unicorns. He had no idea what to do here.

“…Okay,” he managed, “Well…Grauntie Mabel is an adult. I’m sure she can handle this.”

…

The ‘Gideon thing’ didn’t go away anywhere near as quickly as Stanley had hoped. 

“It’s not a _date,_ date,” Grauntie Mabel was saying. He could hear her and Dipper talking in the kitchen from their bedroom door. “It’s just, you know, I felt bad for him. I wanted to throw the guy a bone.”

“Mabel, why are you encouraging this if you’re not interested?”

“I’m not _encouraging_ it, I just…”

She trailed off.

Dipper sighed. “Just don’t let this go too far”

“Don’t worry, Bro. Everything’s under control.”

“Um…Stanley?” Stanford called from over by the window.

Stanley went over to see what was his brother was looking at. Gideon Gleeful was riding up the path on a massive white stallion. 

They lost sight of him as he got closer to the door, but they knew when he made it from the sound of Mabel’s shriek when she opened it.

…

It took a while for her to get back. Dipper was tense the whole time. He had brought his laptop out into the living room instead of holing up in his office for once, and he sat at the little table and worked while the boys watched TV. 

He didn’t seem all that focused on what he was doing though. Stanley snuck a glance at the screen while he was getting up to go to the bathroom and found that his uncle had filled an entire page with the letter M.

Stanford was flipping through channels when he got back. The show that they were watching had just ended, and there wasn’t much else on that they would both want to watch.

He stopped when the got to the local news channel. A familiar face had just come on the screen.

It was a still-image, paparazzi-style photo. In it, Gideon was smiling at the camera. Grauntie Mabel was next to him with a hand over her eyes, squinting against the camera flashes.

_“-guessing whether we’re witnessing the birth of Gravity Falls’ new power couple! We now go live over to-”_

The remote was pulled out of Stanford’s hand as Grunkle Dipper came over and changed the channel. Ducktective came on the screen. It was an episode that they’d seen before, but they just watched it anyway.

No one really said much else until they heard the sound of Mabel’s keys in the side door.

Mabel jumped a little when she stepped in and saw them all turned to stare at her, clutching something red and squirming closer to her chest. Then she walked over to the fish tank and dropped it in. 

“So,” said Dipper, trying just a bit too hard for casual. “How did it go?”

She didn’t look up at any of them.

“I don’t know. We have a lobster now.”

“Sweet,” said Stanley.

“Grauntie Mabel, lobsters need salt water,” said Stanford.

Mabel went to the kitchen and came back with a box of salt. She poured a bunch of it straight into the tank.

“Okay, but-” Stanford stopped. “We’ll, uh, get that right later.”

“Well,” said Dipper, “on the bright side, it’s over now, right?”

Mabel didn’t say anything.

“It’s _over_ now, right Mabel?”

She traced her finger down the side of the tank. The lobster’s eyes followed it.

“I’ll tell him on our next date,” she mumbled.

Silence.

“What next date?” Dipper asked, his tone flat. He didn’t look too pleased.

Still nothing

“Mabel.”

That broke her. She grabbed fistfuls of her hair and yelled. The boys jumped. Dipper didn’t.

“I don’t know! He asked me out again, and I was _trying_ to say no, but then there were all these people watching, and a _macaw…”_

Stanley was the only one who noticed Stanford slip out of the room then. Grunkle Dipper and Grauntie Mabel were completely focused on each other.

“There was a _what?_ ”

“I do like him,” Mabel said, “but…just not in that way! I just don’t want to hurt his feelings.”

Stanley got the feeling that Gideon wouldn’t like that very much. From the perspective of someone who couldn’t get a girl to even make eye contact with him though, that still sounded like a win in his books.

“I’ll end it tomorrow.”

“Good,” said Dipper.

Behind them, Stanford was quietly scooping the fish out of the salty tank and into a clean bowl of water.

…

It didn’t end the next day. Grauntie Mabel came home and went straight to her room without a word to anyone. 

“I don’t think she told him,” Stanford whispered to him after they’d watched her go by.

Stanley went to go peek out the window. Gideon was still standing on the path. He saw Stanley glaring at him, and he smiled back.

…

There was still no sign of Grauntie Mabel by the next morning. Stanford was still wrapped up in his books, so Stanley ended up wandering down to the shop on his own and sat up on the counter while he waited to see if she'd come down. Some of the people coming up to check out with Maria gave him odd looks, but since no one actually said anything he figured he was fine up there. 

He had sort of stopped paying attention to the crowd and was just telling Maria about the Stan o' War when the bell hanging over the shop door rang yet again. He didn't think anything of it until Maria looked away from him and said, "Oh my, aren't you cute."

Stanley looked over. It was the creepy kid from the Tent of Telepathy. Little...Bub, or Bud, or whatever. He had changed out of the blue show getup today. Instead, he had on a pink version of one of those flower shirts tourists wore sometimes. In this opinion. that wasn't necessarily worse than the little suit, but he wasn't sure it was an improvement either.

"Why, thank you kindly, miss" said the boy, with a bright smile at Maria. Then he went straight up to Stanley. 

"Stan Pines?"

Stanley automatically looked around in case the other Stan Pines had entered the room without him noticing. Once he didn't see his twin and was sure the kid was talking to him, he answered, "Yeah? What do you want?"

"Why, I don't want anything." said the kid. He stepped closer. "I know you're still pretty new in town, so I thought I'd stop by to get to know you."

Stanley wasn't quite that desperate for friends. The kid looked about 2 years younger than him, and he hadn't really managed to make any better of an impression on Stanley then his old man had.

"Now, I was on my way to the shopping mall. Would you by any chance want to come along for the ride?"

Not really, but this seemed like it could be a good opportunity. He might be able to figure Gideon out a bit better, or at least maybe he could get his kid to pass on a message. "Okay, he said. "I'll go get my brother."

"Well, alright," said Bud, leaning against the counter, "but I do have to say, I was hoping that it could just be the two of us. "Y'see, I was planning on stopping by the arcade, and from what I've heard that seems like more your strong suit than his."

So, he wanted it to be just the two of them. That worried him a bit, but Stanford wasn’t taking him seriously about any of this anyway, and this might be too good of a chance to figure out what the Gleefuls were planning to pass up. Besides, Maria was still listening, and Bud probably wouldn’t have invited him in front of an adult witness if he wasn’t expecting Stanley to make it back.

He was already in the car by the time it occurred to him to wonder if he had just been kidnapped. 

He didn’t recognize the man driving them. Thankfully though they did actually head towards the arcade. Stanley soon found himself sitting with Bud on a bench outside the building and finishing up ice-cream cone with 3 scoops on it.

There were a lot of people around. Like, around them specifically. There were also a lot of faces turned in their direction. Stanley was sort of used to people keeping an eye on him in public places, but that was usually because they thought he was going to shoplift or something. 

“What are those people doing with their faces?” Stanley asked.

“They’re _smiling_ at us.” Bud put his fingertips to the corner of his mouth as he spoke.

“Oh. Why?”

Bud chuckled. “Because they think we’re delightful, of course!”

Stanley, who had never been referred to as “delightful” in his life, had no idea how to respond to that. Fortunately, Bud kept talking.

“Most folks in this lovely town know your aunt, and, of course, they know my father. I think they like seeing us together.”

That finally reminded Stanley what the point of this whole thing was. He got to his feet. 

“Now you listen here,” he said. “I don’t know what your dad thinks he’s playing at, but-”

“Stanley, your ice cream is melting.”

Sure enough, a second later Stanley felt a cold trickle on his hand. 

Then he lost track of what he had been saying for a few minutes as Bud passed him a stack of napkins and he had to lick up as much of the ice cream as he could before it all ended up on the ground. 

“Now, what was it you were saying?” Bud asked as Stanley was tossing the sticky napkins in the garbage. 

Stanley tried to get back the energy he’d had going a minute ago. “You can tell your Dad that my Aunt’s not interested in him, and if he keeps-”

“Was that all you were worried about?”

That was not the response that Stanley had been expecting. Bud didn’t even look offended. Just a little surprised.

“Well, yeah, but-”

“Did she say anything to him.”

Stanley glanced away. “N-no, but she-”

“Well, that sounds like something they can work out themselves, doesn’t it?”

It did when he said it like that, even though it hadn’t just 5 minutes ago. Bud went to the trash and tossed out what was left of his own ice cream cone. 

“It’s okay, Stanley. My Daddy seems to really care about your Aunt Mabel. I know he’ll be sad about it, but as long as she’s sure that’s what she really wants then he’ll understand.”

“Oh,” said Stanley. He was still trying to seem firm, but he didn’t think he was pulling it off any more. “Good.”

Bud started walking off then. “C’mon, Stanley. Let’s head on inside.”

They actually did spend a while in the arcade after that. It was smaller than the ones back home, but he didn’t usually have that much change to blow on that anyway. Bud offered him a sack full of tokens, and Stanley was absolutely ready to take him up on that. 

Bud pooled the tickets that he had earned with him (which was somehow about 10 times what Stanley had), and Stanley ended up walking out with a new Captain Nazi-Puncher action figure. 

“It really is such a shame that your Aunt is going to end things.” Bud said, as they made it back to the sidewalk. “We could have done this more often.”

Stanley looked over at him. “What do you mean?”

Bud smiled.

…

Bud waved goodbye to him out the window as his car pulled away from the Crafter’s Cottage. Stanley watched them go until they disappeared around the trees.

He was glad he’d gotten a chance to talk to Bud. He was feeling a lot better now. Stanley had been overthinking this whole thing. Bud had been sure that his Dad actually really cared about Grauntie Mabel, and if he was making her uncomfortable it wasn’t on purpose. It would be fine once they talked things out. Besides, if he really couldn’t get her to like him back, then he was sure that Mabel could handle it. Just like Stanford had-

He opened the front door to find his twin crouched down and wide-eyed in the hallway. He looked up when Stanley came in and put a finger on his lips. 

Raised voices were coming from the living room. Stanley dropped down next to Stanford to listen. They had learned from experience that when adults were fighting, it was best to figure out what was going on before you walked into the middle of it.

“I don’t know! I was in the friendzone, and then before I knew it, he pulled me into the romance zone! It was like quicksand!”

“Mabel, you have to deal with this. Just tell him no.”

“I can’t!”

“Yes, you can. Take Candy and Grenda with you if you’re worried.”

“I’m not _that_ kind of worried! I just…you know…don’t want to break his heart.”

“He is a grown man, and in all honestly I think he knows exactly what he’s doing. Hurting his feelings doesn’t matter as much as you think it does. Just end it! It’s just going to keep getting worse if you leave it.”

“It’s not just him either! There’s always other people around-”

“Him pulling other people into this is a red flag. You should know better than that.”

It went quiet.

“Look,” said Dipper, and his voice was much softer now. “Just…don’t go tonight, alright? For me, if nothing else. If you can’t deal with this now, just miss this one. You can even call later and tell him you were sick if you want. Just go to bed early and think about this in the morning.”

“…Okay,” said Mabel, “but you need to get some rest too. I don’t think you’ve made it to an actual bed to sleep for about a week.”

That got a laugh out of Dipper, and then their voices got too hard to hear as they moved into a different room. 

“Where were you?” Stanford asked. His gaze drifted down to Captain Nazi Puncher. 

Stanley looked down at it too. He’d been so excited about it just a few minutes ago. Now all the sudden it felt gross in his hand. He almost dropped it on the spot. 

He’d let himself get conned, just like all the other people who’d been suckered in. Bud had almost turned him into just one more person watching Grauntie Mabel so she couldn’t say no. 

He was angry. He didn’t know if it was at Gideon or Bud or himself, but it was enough to have him marching into the kitchen and slamming the toy into the trash. 

“What was that?” asked Sixer, who was trailing in after him uncertainly.

“Nothing,” he said. “What did I miss?”

Stanford still looked confused, but he gave him the recap of what she’d finally told Dipper about her last ‘date’.

“He asked her to meet him for dinner tonight too,” he said. “and he got her to say yes somehow. It’s weird. It doesn’t even sound like _she_ understands what happened.”

He was quiet for a moment, and then softly added, “You were right. I don’t think she’s handling it.”

“Did she say where they were supposed to meet next?” Stanley asked quietly. He didn’t want Dipper and Mabel to hear him.

Hesitating a little, Stanford answered, “At a fancy restaurant. I think it was called _The Club_.”

Stanley knew the place. He had noticed it from the weird shape when he passed it with Bud on the way back from the arcade. 

“What time?”

“In about an hour, I think.”

An hour. It wasn’t a big town. They could probably make it walking. 

“Let’s go,” he said, heading to the door. 

He heard Stanford scrambling after him. “Wh-what are we doing?”

“We’re going to see Gideon,” he said. “If Grauntie Mabel can’t tell him to get lost, we’ll do it for her.”

…

This was, without a doubt, the fanciest restaurant that either of them had ever been in. The whole thing just looked like a sea of red curtains and fancy lights, and everyone there seemed to be dressed in their best clothes.

The reception area was empty when they got there. They just slipped right in. Gideon was easy to spot. They could see his white puff sticking up over a menu at the back. 

Stanley marched over with Stanford at his heels. 

“Hey, you.”

Gideon put down the menu, looking surprised. The chair he was in was red velvet and shaped like a club. It was hard to imagine the Grauntie Mabel – who was almost constantly wearing fluffy handmade sweaters and loved eating sparkly rainbow pancakes for breakfast – ever feeling comfortable enough to enjoy herself here.

“Oh, Stanley and Stanford Pines. What a surprise to see you boys here! How have you two been?”

Stanley slammed his hands down on the table. “Can it and listen up! Mabel’s not coming. You’re being creepy and she doesn’t want to see you again, so just get lost!” 

Gideon’s eye twitched. “So what you’re saying is… _you’ve come between us._ ”

It was summertime, but as Gideon stared him down Stanley suddenly felt cold. They really needed to turn down the AC in here. 

“Yeah,” he said, “and what are _you_ going to do about it?”

Stanford was tugging on his sleeve. Stanley looked around. His yelling had gotten the attention of a lot of the other diners, and a waiter was starting to head their way. 

The cold disappeared. 

Gideon chuckled. “Why, nothing, of course! It’s unfortunate, but these things happen. You boys be safe getting home now.”

Stanford was pulling his sleeve harder now. 

They left the restaurant. It was getting dark outside, and the air was cooler than when they had gone in.

“Well,” Stanley put his hands on his hips, “I think that went pretty good.”

Stanford just stared at him.

…

Things still seemed promising by the next morning. There was no sign of Gideon around the house, at least.

Stanley wanted to think it was over, but he and Stanford had talked after they’d snuck back into the house last night.

“We have to wait and see,” Stanford had said. “Maybe he listened, but he might have just been saying that so he wouldn’t cause a scene.”

On one hand, that made sense. On the other, Sixer did tend to be a bit of a paranoid mess sometimes. 

His nerd of a brother had been going through his books of a lot this week, but what he was doing now seemed different. Stanley watched him for a while as he sat on his bed, hardly settling on any one page of the Journal for more than a few seconds. 

“What do you think you’re going to find there, anyway?” Stanley asked once he lost patience for the sound of rustling paper. “You think that Author guy might have used 20 bucks as a bookmark?”

“I don’t know,” he didn’t stop turning pages. “Something just seems off about all this, but I can’t figure out what.”

“What d’you mean?” Stanley laid back on the bed. “We told him off and he got the message.”

“Something felt…” Stanford paused, struggling to find the words, “weird last night.”

“C’mon Poindexter. You’re going to have to better than ‘weird’. This is Gravity Falls. Wax people tried to kill us last week.”

Stanford rolled his eyes. “Fine. It felt like something was happening, even though he was just sitting there. Do you remember the show? How we both stood up even though we didn’t want to?

He sort of remembered that, but looking back it didn’t seem like there was as much too it as Stanford was thinking. They had just gotten more caught up in things than they had expected.

Breakfast was ready. He could smell it. Stanley hopped up off the bed. 

“I think you need to take a break, bro,” he said.

Everyone was on edge at breakfast, even the pig. He could tell that Dipper had been the one to make it (everything was the color it was supposed to be), but not even he was eating much. Mabel was just sculpting with her eggs. Lightening the mood was a challenge. He even tried one of his best bits: the old ‘sausages stuffed in mouth like walrus tusks’ gag. No one yelled at him to stop playing with his food at least, but it didn’t get anything more than a weak chuckle out of anyone. 

Grauntie Mabel kept checking her phone. He wanted to tell her what they’d done, but he didn’t really know what she’d say. What if she thought that it had been none of his business?

Stanford disappeared back upstairs as soon as breakfast was done, leaving Stanley to wander around on his own for a while. At one point he found a teenage girl hiding in the bushes out front with a camera, trying to get a paparazzi photo of ‘Gideon’s new girlfriend’. He yelled at her till she left.

Apart from that, he was bored. Dan and Maria were busy working, and no one else was being any fun. 

He had given up and was on his way inside when he noticed the newspaper lying on the grass. No one had brought it inside that morning, and it was starting to get a little damp.

He grabbed it and tossed it down on the living room table once he made it inside. He checked on the fish while he was in there. They were doing alright – Dipper had washed out the tank, and the lobster was now in its own little aquarium.

Stanley noticed the bit of color poking out of the rolled-up newspaper on as he was leaving the room. He went back and pulled it out. 

It was a light blue flier. According to the big bold letters, someone was looking to unload a used kid’s bike. Anyone interested was supposed to meet them at 412 Gopher Road to pick it up that evening.

That was probably too good to be true, but Stanley was a natural-born gambler.

…

“Yep, this is definitely not a front,” said Stanford, staring at the currently-empty factory. “Are you sure we’ve got the right place?”

He hadn’t seemed impressed when Stanley had insisted on bringing him out here. He definitely wasn’t looking any more impressed now. 

“Yeah, this was…” Stanley checked his pockets and discovered that the flier wasn’t in them. “Okay, I lost the thing, but this was where it said to go.”

“Alright, I’m going home.”

Stanley ran over and grabbed his shirt before he managed to make it more than a few feet. “Look, we’re here early. We can check the place out first – see if they’ve actually got what they promised. If they don’t, we’ll get out of here.”

Bike or no bike, they were probably ready for a new adventure. Sometimes Sixer needed something to distract him when he got too caught up in his own head.

“Alright.” Stanford sighed, “but we’re leaving at the first sign of anything sketchy.”

They spent the next few minutes poking around outside. There weren’t any cars around, or signs of any other people at all really. Then of course Stanford found some weird hoofprints leading into the woods and started going on about them being bipedal – whatever that meant. 

While he was busy with that, Stanley went to inspect the building itself. He certainly wasn’t going to pass up the chance to check out a possibly abandoned factory.

The first door he tried was locked. The second wasn’t. Stanley found himself entering a big, dimly-lit room with piles of boxes scattered everywhere. He went to the closest and opened it up. 

There were dolls inside. Dolls that wore little blue suits and big white hairdos.

…

Mabel was chewing the end of her braid on the porch when Dipper came out to sit with her. 

She didn’t say anything at first, and neither did he. Instead, he kept his eyes on the brilliant orange glow of the sunset behind the outlines of the trees.

“I texted him and said I was sick yesterday.”

He looked over at her. “And?”

She sighed, letting her braid slip away from her mouth. “He’s going to stop by tomorrow to see how I’m doing.”

Silence fell again. Mabel fiddled with a loose yarn end on her sweater.

“Are you alright?”

Mabel didn’t answer. 

Dipper sighed. “Look, sorry if I’ve been getting to harsh about this whole thing. It’s just-”

She lifted a hand up near his face, cutting him off. “No, I get it. You were right. I’m 60. Why am I handling this so badly?”

Dipper nudged her. “Hey, at least you’ve outgrown Sweater Town.”

She finally looked at him then. Without breaking eye contact, she unrolled the top of her turtleneck and disappeared up to the top of her nose inside. 

“You never outgrow Sweater Town.” Her voice came out muffled. Dipper laughed.

He hadn’t fully closed the door behind him when he had come out. Waddles pushed his head against it until it swung open and trotted over. He snuffled around the sweater neck until Mabel’s head was all the way back out. 

She threw her arms around the pig’s neck. He’d been following her around the house a lot over the last few days. 

“You know, if you really needed me to deal with Gideon for you, I would.”

Mabel pulled one arm off of Waddles to put it around Dipper.

“I know you would. And I know why you haven’t.”

Mabel took in a deep breath and let out a sigh. She stood up. 

“When he comes tomorrow, can you stick around while I talk to him? I don’t want you to say anything. Having you there would just help keep me on track.”

He grinned up at her. “Absolutely.”

Then he got up, stretched, and looked at his watch. He winced slightly. “Alright, it’s getting too late to cook anything for dinner. I’ll go order a pizza.”

He went inside. Mabel sat back down on the porch, leaning back against Waddles. 

Dipper was frowning when he came back out a few minutes later. 

“Hey,” he said, “have you seen the boys around lately?”

…

So, it turned out that Gideon was not actually as much as a scammer as Stanley had thought he was. He now had some very solid proof of this, considering that he was hanging in mid-air and Gideon-brand merchandise was floating around him.

“So, just checking, but is this still because Grauntie Mabel doesn’t want to date you?” he asked. He was doing his best to squirm out, but it wasn’t doing much good, “because I don’t think this is going to change her mind. You’d be better off getting her…I dunno…rainbow kittens, or something?”

Gideon squeezed at the glowing rock at his neck tighter, and suddenly it was hard to breathe.

“Shut up!” he yelled. “It was you that turned her against me! But I’m going to make sure that you won’t get between us again.”

Gideon loosened is grip, and Stanley could breathe again. “What are you talking about?” 

“You see boy, I’ve been wanting to find a chance to figure out just what this can do. I’ve been able to use it to help people see things my way. I think if I push a little harder, I might be able to change your tune.” 

Stanley stopped struggling as those words sank in. 

He thought about seeing Mabel coming home from those ‘dates’, looking overwhelmed and confused and talking about how she _didn’t know what happened._ He thought about Dipper’s _you should know better._

He stared Gideon right in the eyes. 

“Have you been using this magic junk on my aunt?”

His voice came out quiet. He didn’t know why it came out so quiet when he felt like yelling instead.

“My Mabel’s been doing just fine. She only needed a push because she was feelin’ a lil’ bit shy.”

Gideon had only gotten through saying ‘my Mabel’ before Stanley was already fighting to get lose again.

“None of that, now,” said Gideon. 

Stanley noticed the sudden shadow over him before he heard the creak, but he wouldn’t have had time to do anything about the stack of boxes that was suddenly coming down on Gideon’s poof of a head even if he had wanted to. By the time the dust settled, he could just see an arm sticking out from the pile. 

Stanley dropped. A pair of hands pulled him back up to his feet while he was still rubbing at his banged-up chin.

...

Gideon was still unearthing himself by the time that Stanford had managed to drag Stanley behind one of the stacks of boxes. Quietly, the two of them moved as far back in as they could. 

Stanley was trying to explain what was going on, but Stanford quickly shushed him. He’d heard quite a bit of it already. 

He had looked up from the tracks outside to say something to his brother and realized he was alone. Stanford had heard his voice, and Gideon’s, and slipped into the room and behind some of the boxes moments before the door had slammed closed. 

"It's that stone on his tie, right?" He whispered. 

Stanley nodded. “He can move stuff around with it,” he whispered back, “and he’s been using it on Grauntie Mabel.

Stanford frowned. “Then we’re going to have to get it away from him somehow. Any ideas?”

“Where’d you go?” they heard, and then they winced at the crashing sounds that followed. Gideon was looking for Stanley. 

They could see the next bunch of boxes light up and rise into the air before they were tossed aside. He seemed to just be moving a stack or so at a time. Stanford’s best guess for why was that Gideon was worried about explaining things to Mabel if he squashed her nephew.

Stanley’s next whisper was quieter than Stanford had thought he was capable of being. “I think I can grab it off him, but I don’t know how to get close.”

Stanford had no doubt that his brother could probably manage to pickpocket an acorn out of a squirrel’s cheek, but not even he would be able to sneak up on him now.

There was another crash.

They couldn’t hide forever, and the only door out of the room was glowing. Gideon must be using his powers to hold it so they couldn’t get out. The only advantage he could think of was that as far as Gideon was aware, this was a one-on-one fight.

He looked back at Stanley, who was trying to peer around the box without being seen. An idea was beginning to form in his mind. 

Maybe it was time it was time to pull out one of their old default tactics. 

…

Gideon let out a sound that was almost a growl as he sent another pile of boxes tumbling down. Soon, he reassured himself. He knew it wouldn't take much longer. The boy was almost out of places to hide.

"Wait!"

As if on cue, a red and white shirt and a messy brown mop of hair was emerging from behind a box.

Gideon started to reach for his amulet.

"Hold on!" cried the boy, "I just want to ask you something first."

Gideon considered it. Stanley was trapped, and he could see that the boy knew it. The boy was squirming anxiously, wringing his hands behind his back. He wouldn't be able to make a move before Gideon could stop him.

Well, it seemed like the brat was ready to be somewhat reasonable, at least. He let the charming smile come back onto his face. Starting off on a positive note would help the little readjustments stick better.

Stanley hesitated.

Gideon felt a prick of annoyance starting to come back. “Come on boy, spit it out.”

“Do you really like her?” he asked. “Grauntie Mabel, I mean.”

It was ridiculous that he even felt the need to ask that at this point, but Gideon allowed himself to get caught up in it anyway.

“Of course I love my sugar dumpling!”

And he did. She was wonderful; so funny, and creative, and sweet. They were a match made in heaven.

“It’s just…I think you’re going to have a problem.”

That prick of annoyance was getting bigger.

“What are you on about?” he snapped. “What problem?”

All the sudden, Stanley stopped fidgeting. He straightened up from his hunched posture, tensing even to the point that Gideon could see it from across the room. 

“You’re a creep,” he said.

Enraged, Gideon reached up to activate the amulet. Instead, his hand closed on cloth. 

He looked down. His tie was gone. Gideon patted frantically at his collar before searching around the floor in case he had somehow dropped it. 

He saw the other Pines kid with the brown jacket behind him then. In one hand was a pair of his brand’s own lamb shears. In the other was his bolo tie. The string was cut. 

The boy he had been talking to was now pulling a pair of glasses out of his back pocket and shoving them onto his face with a six-fingered hand.

…

Stanley dropped the shears with a clang and managed to dodge Gideon’s attempt to grab him while Stanford made it to the door. Gideon had closed the lock, but it came open easily now. 

All that dancing on stage didn’t seem to be quite enough to keep Gideon in shape. Stanley was able to make it past him and to the door just as Stanford was getting through.

“Get back here with that, boy!”

They were outside now, but they weren’t in the clear yet. No one else seemed to be around, and it had taken them half an hour to get here from the cottage. He could hear Gideon staggering out behind them. Even Stanford had to admit that he didn’t have the best stamina. They were going to have to lose him as quickly as possible. Their best bet was probably to try to shake him off their trail in the denser forest. Stanford started to veer towards the tree line. 

There was a yelp and a thud.

He skidded to a halt and looked back. Stanley was on the ground just in front of a little dip in the ground. Gideon was gaining on him. 

Stanley looked at the amulet.

“Catch!” he shouted, and threw it over to Stanford.

Or at least, he _tried_ to throw it to Stanford. Unfortunately, Stanley was still being an idiot about wearing his glasses and Gym was the one class that Stanford couldn’t get anything better than a D+ in.

With a blue puff of smoke, the stone smashed against a rock about two feet away from where he was actually standing.

The sound made all three of them freeze.

“No,” said Gideon. He rushed over and tried to scoop up some of the pieces. “No, no, no!”

This was good, he supposed, but he couldn’t help feeling a bit of regret himself as he looked at the remains. Stanford would have liked a chance to figure out how it worked.

The amulet was destroyed, but Gideon was still there and now very angry. He managed to grab Stanford before they could move back and lifted him up by the front of his shirt. 

“Do you have any idea what you two just did, boy?!” he yelled. 

Stanley had rushed over, yelling and kicking and yanking at the man to try to make him let go. Gideon didn’t pay him any attention. His grip tightened. 

A horn blared.

There was a screech of tires as a worn blue station wagon came tearing down the road and to an abrupt stop close to them. Grauntie Mabel was already on her way out of the passenger side door while it was still skidding, and Grunkle Dipper emerged from the driver’s seat. 

“Gideon!” Mabel yelled

Gideon quickly set Stanford back down and brushed off his shoulders, ignoring his attempts to smack his hands away. He walked over to meet her with his hands outstretched. “Why, Mabel! My marshmallow! The boys and I were just-”

“Gideon,” she stepped to the side as she talked, and the man turned to follow her until Stanford was looking at his back. “We need to talk.”

“I-”

She didn’t look at her nephews. Her eyes stayed level on Gideon’s face. “It’s not going to work out, Gideon. I’m sorry, but I can’t be your marshmallow. I need to be honest with you.”

“But – I –” Stanford saw him reaching up, grabbing the empty space where his tie used to be.

“I like you, but I just don’t think it’s in the same way you like me.” She moved closer to him and put a hand up on his shoulder. “But, hey, we can still be friends, right? Do you still want to see each other sometimes?”

From the side, Stanford could see Gideon’s face melt into a warm smile and knew that this wasn’t going to be enough. As long as she kept giving him that in, Gideon was going to keep trying.

“Really?” Gideon asked.

“Don’t-” Stanley started, but he cut off abruptly as Dipper silently slipped up to him and put a hand over his mouth. His other arm went around Stanford. 

He tugged them both backwards. 

Mabel had kept her hand on Gideon’s shoulder and the gentle smile on her face. She dropped that smile the second she saw that her twin had gotten the boys into the car.

She raised her other hand and sucker-punched Gideon in the gut.

“Of course not!” she yelled as he doubled over, clutching his stomach. “What the hell were you thinking, going after my family!?”

Then Dipper shut the backseat door and stood in front of it, so they couldn’t quite make out everything else that she was screaming at him. But by the time that she was stomping her way back to the car door behind her Stanford could see Gideon staring after them with a look on his face like he’d just been hit by a bus and Stanley was watching her like he’d just found his new hero. They both scrambled away from the window and back to their seats when she made it to the door.

They all sat in silence as Dipper started the car. 

He’d come screeching on to the lot, but he pulled out like he always did; double checking the mirrors and pulling out slowly even though there were no other cars around. After a few minutes they were back on the main road and heading home. 

“So,” said Dipper, “is anyone going to talk about what just happened?”

No one answered.

“Alright,” said Dipper. “First off, do we need to call the police? Because at this point, I will take responsibility for doing that.”

The suggestion startled him. “No?”

Dipper gave him a look. “That’s not a reassuring answer, kid.”

Stanford thought about it properly. In other circumstances, maybe calling the cops wouldn’t be a bad idea. However, Gideon still had the rest of the town on his good side, and they had no case to make without the amulet. “No.”

“How’d you know where we were?” Stanley asked. 

Mabel rustled around in her skirt pocket and pulled out a crumpled piece of paper – the flier that Stanley had showed him earlier. 

“We found it in your room,” Dipper explained. “Mabel recognized the address. So, what exactly has been going on? What did he want with you two?”

A little reluctantly, Stanford gave them the simplest summary he could: they had tried to tell him to stay away from Grauntie Mabel, and he had tried to change their mind. Mabel had her head resting on the dashboard by the time he was done.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I know I haven’t been myself lately. I should have dealt with this a long time ago.”

“Hey,” said Stanley, “it wasn’t your fault. He really was psychic! He had this glowy rock thing, and he could move stuff around…”

Stanley was sitting behind Dipper, so he didn’t notice the way that his eyes suddenly jolted away from the road and over to his sister. He gave her single, tight little nod before his expression relaxed again. He let out an almost forced-sounding laugh.

“You don’t say. That magic rock isn’t still hanging around, is it?”

Now Dipper just sounded like he was humoring them. Maybe that look had been him wondering if the boys had gone nuts.

“No, it smashed into like a hundred pieces.”

“Good. We’ll talk about this again tomorrow, but for now we’ll say that neither of you are allowed to go out without telling us where you’re going.”

“No more letting guys distract me this summer.”

“I will warn you now though,” Dipper said over his shoulder, “this is not the first time she has promised this.

“Fine.” Mabel amended, “no more letting _creepy_ guys distract me this summer.”

“I’ll take it,” said Dipper. “Seriously though, you let us know if he comes anywhere near either of you again, and we’ll deal with it. When we get serious, we can have him _wishing_ that we’d just called the cops.”

That worried Stanford for a moment. He had just gotten a demonstration of why Gideon might be a bigger danger to them then they might be expecting. 

Then he remembered the sound the amulet had made when it had hit the rock.

Stanley clued in at the same time “Hey, yeah,” he said, “what’s he going to do now?”

“Ooh, watch out,” said Stanford, “he might _guess your card_.”

That made Dipper laugh. “Or guess what number you’re thinking of.”

“I’m great at that game,” said Mabel. “Trick is, you pick something that no one will ever think of, like a decimal or a negative.”

They spent the rest of the ride home making fun of everything from Gideon’s hair to his accent, pausing only when they stopped at a drive-thru. 

“Mabel, can I talk to you for a minute?” said Dipper, as he turned off the car.

“Sure Bro. I’ll be in in a sec.” She passed the takeout bags back to the boys to carry as they were all getting out. They were on their way to the door when she called out to them.

“Hey, Stanley, Stanford? One more thing.”

They both turned back to look at her. 

She reached out and snagged them both, pulling them in for a hug. 

“Thanks for looking out for me.”

She pressed a kiss to the top of each of their heads before she let them go.

They had looked out for her. Probably not in the most _effective_ way, but it seemed unlikely now that Gideon would keep bothering her now. It felt good to hear it.

He got to the steps before he realized that Stanley wasn’t following him.

He looked around and spotted him still standing by the car. He stared at the door until it swung closed behind Mabel, and then his face slowly broke out into a huge grin.

It was the look, he realized, of someone who very rarely got to be the hero.

Stanley noticed Stanford watching him. Suddenly, he rushed forward, snatching the bag out of Stanford’s hands.

“Better hurry, or I’m gonna eat your fries,” he said. Then he disappeared into the house, leaving his brother to chase after him.

…

VWDQOHB ODWHU JLYHV WKH OREVWHU D NQLIH. WKLQJV HVFDODWH TXLFNOB.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I keep working on this thinking that the next chapter is going to be simpler. This is over 10,000 words long. I need to get a grip on this or Weirdmaggedon is going to be a novel.
> 
> Since I had a bigger gap between updates than I wanted, the next thing I post for this is going to be a (much shorter) bonus chapter. That will be up sometime within the week and will focus on Stanford and Grunkle Dipper. 
> 
> Also, side note: just in case anyone was thrown off by the 'Alcor' thing, I would like to clarify that this story is not connected to the Transcendence AU. A certain somebody was just under the impression that 'Tyrone Alcor' made for a cool penname.
> 
> Thanks for reading, 
> 
> -platform13


	6. 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stanley and Stanford tag along with Dan and his friends for a very memorable night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay. everybody. I had some hiccups with this one. 
> 
> Just in case anyone gets confused as the chapter goes:  
> Shandra is Shandra Jimenez, the reporter from the show  
> Daryl and Edwin are Blubs and Durland  
> Janice is Janice Valentino – daughter of Robert and Tambry Valentino. In cannon, she was Robbie’s mother.  
> Greg is the younger version of Greg Valentino (Robbie’s Dad) from the show. I didn’t want to make him and Janice siblings, so I had to find a new family for him. In this story his name is Greg McCorkle.

Stanley had read a lot of comic books in his day. He wasn’t really sure that this counted as one of them.

There was absolutely zero punching, and he had already lost track of anything vaguely resembling a storyline. It was horror, maybe. A big, shadowy, _something_ stalked the main character for several pages before he got to a whole spread of just dark blobs and gurgling sound effects.

The author’s name was just written as “Gorney”.

He closed the comic and put it back on the shelf. His aunt really needed to do a little more filtering on what she let people sell here.

Stanford had brought that book with him downstairs, but since he was still being weird about letting people see it he was sitting sort of tucked behind the counter.

“Stanley,” he kept reading as he spoke, “do you think ghosts are real?”

Stanley laughed and punched his arm. “What, lake monster not enough for you, bro?”

They were supposed to be helping out, really, but there wasn’t much of anything for them to actually help with. They’d probably only had three customers all morning. Even Maria was taking a break. She’d somehow managed to switch the little TV they had to play the security feed by the door to what he was pretty sure was a Spanish soap opera. He had tried to follow along for a bit. He thought they might have just pulled out the ‘evil twin’ twist, but he wasn’t sure.

They all looked up when the bell over the door dinged. It was Mabel, looking like she’d been run over by a truck or something. Stanley had thought she’d been working on some project out back (he didn’t know what it was, but she had headed out this morning with one sack filled with acorns and another filled with he had no idea what), but now her hair was coming out of her bun in tufts, her green sweater was in tatters, and her face and hands were covered in scratches.

“Alright,” she said, “I’m heading out for a bit. Also, Maria? The squirrels are back.”

Maria nodded. Then she disappeared off to the back for a minute and came back with a broom. She left without a word, tapping the handle in the palm of her hand like a mobster with a bat as she walked out.

Stanley looked around. He and Stanford were now the only people in the shop. 

He poked his brother until he finally took his eyes off the journal. “Hey. Does this mean that we’re in charge now?”

Stanford shrugged and looked back down. “Dan’s around somewhere.”

Stanley got up and went over to the window. No sign of Dan. The quiet outside was only disturbed by the band of squirrels that came sprinting from around the side of the house somewhere.

Then, a split second before he was about to move away from the window, she moved into view.

She was a little hard to make out from there, but she looked like a girl roughly their age. About the right size, anyway – dark brown hair past her shoulders and a pink t-shirt. Tourists usually showed up in groups or families, or had cameras and fanny packs hanging off them. She didn’t seem to have any of that. She was bent over and poking around the ground.

“Who is _that_?” he asked.

Stanford came to join him at the window. He frowned a little. “I don’t know. I feel like I’ve seen her somewhere before though.”

He took a deep breath, steeling his resolve. He didn’t have the greatest track record with the ladies back home, but Gravity Falls was the closest thing to a fresh start that he was going to get until he and Stanford finished high school and got the _Stan o’ War_ sea-worthy and he was going to make the most of it.

“Wish me luck,” he said. 

Stanford didn’t wish him luck. 

Stanley headed out anyway.

His confidence lasted until he was about five feet away. Crap. She was way prettier up close than he’d been prepared for, and it got even worse when she finished choosing the white flower she wanted out of the little patch in the grass and tucked it into her hair. This was a mistake.

She hadn’t noticed him yet. He could still back out, but he knew that Stanford was watching from the window and his pride was about to take a hit either way. With panic settling in and with no idea what he was about to say, he took a deep breath and opened his mouth.

Mercifully, he was interrupted by the sound of other voices. They weren’t as alone as he had thought.

Dan and some zit-faced teen Stanley didn’t recognize were hanging out together by the golf cart. Dan must have been coming back from a trip into town – he had the cargo attachment hooked up to the back.

He was laughing. Had he ever seen Dan laughing before?

Stanley watched as Dan gave his friend what was probably supposed to be a playful punch on the arm. It sent him tumbling down instead. 

The smile immediately disappeared from Dan's face. He grabbed the other guy's arm and the front of his shirt almost before he hit the ground and hauled him back up so quickly he almost fell over again.

"Don't worry, I'm fine, I'm fine," Pimples was saying. He looked a little dazed, but still good-natured about the whole thing.

Then the guy looked up and spotted Stanley.

"Oh," he said, "This must be one of the Pines's nephews. Which one are you?"

Stanley went over, gladly taking the chance to stall.

"I'm the third brother," said Stanley. "Stancio. They finally let me out of the basement."

The dude chuckled. An actual chuckle that made his hair stand on end. "Stanley, I'm guessing. I'm Greg. And this," he gestured somewhere behind Stanley. "Is my sister Carla."

"Hey" said a quiet voice. Stanley turned. 

The girl he had come out to meet was now standing _right there_ , and Stanley had no idea what to say. She was even prettier at one foot away than she was at five, and she had actually just acknowledged his presence.

Fortunately (or unfortunately) she didn't focus on him for long. Her attention went to her brother. 

"Can I go buy something?" she asked.

Greg immediately started fishing around in his pockets and came up with a couple of 20s. He passed them over. 

Stanley had to get himself a big brother like that.

"I'll be in in a minute," said Greg.

She nodded and headed into the shop, and Stanley just missed his chance to offer to show her around. He cursed his luck. He should have just stayed put.

Greg watched her until she was inside before turning back to Greg. “Hey, you’re still in tonight, right?”

Dan gave a sort of grunt. Stanley had spent enough time around him by this point to know that meant “yes”.

"Perfect! Ooh, by the way," Greg said to Dan. "I'm bringing Carla along. Our parents are gone for a couple days and I'm supposed to be watching her. Hope that's okay."

Dan raised an eyebrow, but didn't say anything.

"Can my brother and I come too?" Stanley blurted out. 

It was entirely possible that he hadn't thought that one through. To his surprise though, Greg beamed at him and clapped a hand on his shoulder. 

"Well, sure! The more the merrier."

“It’s late,” said Dan.

Dan’s words made his elation turn to a sudden chill. Come to think of it, he hadn’t even checked if Dan was okay with Stanley inviting himself along. Dan was big, and it wasn’t late enough in the summer for Stanley to be willing to risk getting on his bad side. He glanced up at him, trying to judge his reaction. 

Dan was just sort of staring at him, eyebrows furrowed a little. He didn't look angry, to Stanley's relief, but he but he didn't look that thrilled either.

“Oh, come on,” Greg told him. He gave Dan a punch in the arm like Dan had given him. Dan didn’t even wobble. “You’re always going on about how you were spending ‘nights in the woods’ by that age. It’ll be fun! Besides, they can keep Carla company.”

Greg was a little _too_ friendly in his opinion, but Stanley wasn't complaining. He was very much on board with the idea of keeping Carla company.

Dan didn’t argue at least, and Greg spent the next few minutes chattering at him about people Stanley didn’t know until they finally headed back to the shop. Dan lugged his cargo of what looked like an industrial-sized amount of yarn back with them.

They opened the door to find her and Stanford at the counter. Stanford had stepped up on the shelves tucked underneath it and was awkwardly hunting for change in the register. He looked relieved when they came in, and he quickly dropped a handful of coins and bills on the counter when Carla turned to look at them. 

“What did you get?” Greg asked.

She held up a sweater for him to see. It was the light blue one with the cartoony frog on it.

“Looks good!” Greg waved goodbye to the boys. “See you two tonight!”

Dan followed him out. Stanley was still riding the high of what had just happened. He had just gotten himself an invitation to hang out not only with Dan and his friends, but with _Carla_ too.

“We’re doing _what_ exactly tonight?” Stanford asked. There was a slight clatter as he hopped back down to the floor.

Stanley had no idea.

…

“Stanley, since when has hanging out around teenagers ever worked out well for us?”

The answer was never. Stanley should know this by now.

He had dragged his brother upstairs as soon as Maria returned with wisps of brown fur tangled into the straw end of the broom and resumed watching her show.

Stanley grabbed onto the back of his jacket to stop his pacing. “Relax, Nerd. It’ll be fine.”

Stanford spun around to face him. “Why? Why will it be fine?”

“Well...they’re Dan’s friends,” Stanley pointed out. “Dan’s not so bad.”

Stanford flung up his arms. “Dan couldn’t do much to us even if he wanted to! We’re his boss’s nephews. Why did they invite us, anyway? What happened out there?”

Stanley hesitated.

“Stanley.”

“Well…”

Stanford held his head in his hands as Stanley gave him a brief summary.

“So did Dan even _want_ us to come?” he asked when his brother was finished.

Stanley shifted uncomfortably. “Didn’t say no, at least.”

Stanford groaned. Stanley threw an arm around his shoulders.

“Hey, don’t be like that,” he said. “This could be great for us! We’ve still gotta get ourselves established here. This is our chance to get an in with Dan’s friends, and Carla-”

“Carla. That girl?” Stanford slowly pulled his hands away from his face as the realization set in. “Wait. Are we doing this just so you can-”

“It’ll be great,” said Stanley. 

Stanford had to resist the urge to strangle him.

…

Greg and Carla were standing on the lawn waiting for them, and they still had no idea what they were actually doing.

They should have probably tried to find out from Dan, but they still didn’t know how to get a read on his mood and he wasn’t volunteering anything. Stanley was too proud to ask and Stanford was too nervous. 

Stanford had made one last ditch effort to get them out of this by ‘asking’ his aunt if it was okay for them to go in hopes that she’d say no. Unfortunately, it turned out that she had already talked to Dan and given him the okay to bring them out. Then she gave Stanford some speech about ‘getting the most out of his youth’.

Maybe he should have asked Dipper instead.

He had to admit – Greg at least seemed to be completely fine with them coming. He had started enthusiastically waving the second he saw them peeking out their window.

Stanford was standing on his own as soon as they made it downstairs. Greg had started chatting with Dan, and Stanley had sidled up next to Carla. Stanford found himself both admiring and regretting his brother’s optimism. There wasn’t a single girl he could think of at their school that had been willing to risk being caught talking to them since 1st Grade, but Stanley was too often willing to try attempting it anyway.

Stanford wasn’t. He was still considering faking an illness as he watched the long black van pull up. He almost did. He actually was feeling a bit queasy, and he couldn’t imagine that any of Dan’s friends would object to him deciding to stay home. The only thing stopping him at this point was how dead-set his brother still was on going. He had a feeling that Stanley was going to tag along with or without him, and they had agreed after the Gideon incident that it was best to stick together.

The tinted windows rolled down.

There were four people in the car. He recognized the two girls in the front. The one hopping out of the driver’s seat to throw her arms around Greg had been at the museum opening. She had stood out because she’d come with the middle-aged guy in all black. She still had the same disturbingly cheerful smile as she hugged Greg. The reporter girl was there too – typing into her phone with her hair done up at the side in a scrunchie and a cat on her off-the-shoulder sweater in the front passenger seat. He didn’t recognize the other two, but they didn’t seem like the brightest bulbs in the box. The two of them looked like total opposites – one dark-skinned, short and round, the other long, lean, and pasty – but he got the sense that they got along. They were just sort of giggling about something together in the middle row. 

Greg gave them all a quick introduction – Janice, Shandra, Daryl, and Edwin.

Shandra took her eyes off whatever she was typing into her phone just long enough to give the two of them a side-eye before glancing up at Dan. “So, you’re babysitting tonight too?”

Stanford mentally put faking illness back on the table.

Stanley was glaring at her. “Hey, I remember you. You better not still be looking for dirt on our Aunt.”

She shrugged. “Hey, you’ve got to take what you can get for news in a town this size.” She eyed Stanley speculatively. “That thing with Big Gideon’s not still going on, is it?”

“No.”

“This is Stanley and Stanford,” said Greg, totally ignoring the moment of unpleasantness. “They’re coming along with us today.”

Dan started opening the middle door to get in next to the two guys. Shandra stopped him.

“Don’t kid yourself,” she said, “you know you don’t fit there anymore.” She moved back to the middle seat, and Dan wound up in the front with Janice.

Then the three kids found themselves being ushered into the back seat to squeeze in with Greg. Stanford wound up stuck in between Stanley and Carla. 

Carla looked over at him. He quickly tucked his hands into the folds of his jacket and shifted as close to Stanley’s side as he could manage. The side of his arm was still pressed against hers, but at least she wasn’t objecting. She didn’t say anything at all.

“Cool car,” said Stanley.

“Thanks!” Janice called back. “It’s my Dad’s. It’s a hearse too. We take the seats out when we’re doing a funeral.”

“Huh,” said Stanley.

It felt like hours – but was probably only about 10 minutes – before they finally began to slow into a parking spot. Stanford practically shoved Stanley out of the way to scramble out as soon as the car had come to a full stop. 

He tried to figure out where they were. It looked like a convenience store. He would have thought that they had maybe stopped for a snack run if it wasn’t for the chain-link fence.

He looked back to see what everyone else was doing. Only one of the passengers was still in the car. She was sitting very still in the back seat staring at the store. 

Greg lowered his head back into the doorway. "C'mon slowpoke. We made it!"

Now she was just staring at him instead.

"Is this going to be like the cemetery?” she asked

Greg chuckled, I promise, this is going to be much better than the cemetery."

She shrank back further into her seat. "I can just stay in here."

“She comin' or what?" the one with the buzzcut called over (Ernie? Edgar? Stanford couldn’t remember his name). "We don't got all night!"

“Now, now, Edwin," his buddy told him. (oh, that was it). "I know how excited you are, but we how ‘bout we do some planning while we wait."

As Greg managed to more or less extract Carla from the back and Edwin and Daryl moved off to the side on their own again, Stanford turned his attention back to the store. If this was their final destination then he could more or less figure out what they were doing there. The place was clearly abandoned, and he and Stanley had done enough exploring for him to be able to understand the appeal of abandoned places.

“How sure are we about all this?” Shandra asked the group in general. “I couldn’t find anything about it in the town archives, but from the looks of things whoever was responsible for managing them should probably be fired.”

“Oh, it definitely happened,” Janice piped up. She had her arms around a very grumpy looking Carla. “My family handled the bodies. My dad found it in our record books for me!”

“So, wait, what’s this about bodies?” Stanford asked.

Greg looked at him thoughtfully for a moment. “Didn’t Dan tell you anything?”

“They didn’t ask,” Dan said, voice dropping to almost a growl.

Greg walked over and poked him in the chest. In an almost cooing voice, he asked, “Are you bein’ shy again?”

Stanford doubted that was the case.

Greg came back over and leaned in close to him and Stanley. With a delighted smile, he said, “You’re looking at one of the most haunted places in Gravity Falls. We’re talking triple homicide!”

And just like that, this whole affair was suddenly much more interesting.

…

Carla had a new flower in her hair. 

This one was yellow. The one that he’d seen her pick up earlier was white. Maybe she liked flowers.

The yellow one looked nice in her hair too.

The promise of ghosts had thankfully been enough to get his dork of a brother to come around. Stanford was now looking intently at the building – searching, Stanley knew, for any signs of the supernatural. At least he was interested in sticking around now.

The fence was shut with a chain and padlock, so they decided to go over. Dan climbed up first. The whole thing creaked ominously, but it held up under his weight. Shandra and Janice went next.

Then Greg started ushering Carla over. Stanley went on standby – just in case she was going to get stuck and need a heroic rescue – but she actually made it over pretty easily. Janice steadied her as she came down the other side. Not wanting to be outdone, Stanley scrambled up as fast as he could. He sort of fumbled the landing (meaning, he dropped like a rock face down on the ground) but in his opinion he managed to get back on his feet fast enough to recover. 

“That’s not so tough,” he said. He gave an intentionally casual stretch and peeked to see if Carla was watching. 

She wasn’t. Carla was facing back the way they had come, head tilted up. 

“I think your brother needs help,” she said.

Stanley tried to figure whether he should be offended at that. Then he actually looked up. 

Stanford had somehow gotten his jacket deeply tangled in the fence on the way down, and he was now hanging mostly upside down as struggled to free himself.

“Oh, no, I’m _fine._ ” He seemed to be struggling to get the sarcasm into his words with his steadily reddening face. He got a proper grip back on the fence and attempted to flip himself over. “No rush.”

Stanley was trying to work out whether or not he could manage to climb back up and unhook him when Dan walked over. He grabbed Stanford with one hand, lifted him up just enough to get him loose, set him back down and walked away without a word.

Then they just had to wait for Afro and Buzzcut. Edwin froze up at the top.

“I can’t do it!” he called down, clinging to the top of the fence. Daryl stood underneath him, arms open wide. 

“Don’t worry, I got you!” he told him.

Daryl and Edwin ended up in a heap at the bottom of the fence once Edwin finally worked up the nerve. No one else besides Sixer was particularly phased by this.

Shandra went to the front door and tried it. “I don’t suppose any of you brought a key?”

This was Stanley’s time to shine. 

“I can open it!” he called, stepping forward. 

Daryl started laughing. Edwin joined in.

“What’s that?” Daryl put his hands on his hips. “City Boy over here doesn’t know how locks work?”

“City boooy! City boooy!” Edwin crowed.

Well then. He’d been making an offer before, but now Stanley _had_ to do it. There was a new group of people _and_ a pretty girl watching, and he had to show that he could deliver. There was too much at stake for him not to.

He snuck a glance back at Dan, weighing the risks. Dan could easily tell their Aunt and Uncle about what Stanley was about to do, but then he would probably get in trouble too. He’d brought them along to a B and E, and all of the Pines in Gravity Falls knew his mom.

Stanley grabbed one of the chunks of concrete that had broken off from the curb. Stanford took a step back. 

He smashed the concrete hard against the window on the door. It was just regular glass, and it shattered at the impact. Very carefully, he reached in and fiddled with the door handle till it popped open.

He turned back to the group. Everyone but Sixer seemed to be in various states of shock. Carla’s mouth was hanging open a bit. 

“Now _that,_ ” he said, “is how we do it in Jersey.”

Greg and Janice at least responded to his offer of a high five on their way in.

The inside more or less looked like the sort of place that where might expect a triple homicide to have happened. The only traces of light came from the streetlamps outside – just enough brightness to cast shadows of the cobwebs on the walls. There were cracks in the window panes even not counting the ones that Stanley had put there himself. The vague outlines of bags, cans, papers, and who knew what else were littered around the floors.

The scent of dust and mold tickled his nose. He sneezed.

The rest of the group – except for Stanford – was dispersing in between the shelves. He could hear their excited muttering and slightly nervous-sounding laughter. 

“Oh, what do we have here?” called Janice’s voice. 

There was a clunk sound, and the lights flickered on. 

The machines hummed back to life.

It wasn’t quite as creepy in the light. It did, however, still have the weirdest design choices he had seen in a convenience store. 

The back wall of the store was decorated in graffiti-style artwork. The other three walls were covered in old, chipped black paint. The shelves were a chrome golden colour, and the space between the ads and community flyers on the walls were covered with old band posters. It looked more like a record shop than anything else.

There was a boombox sitting on the counter. On a whim, Stanley pressed play to see if it still worked. The sounds of old-style rap filled the store.

He went back up to Janice. 

“Sooo….” he said, “what do we do now?”

She beamed at him. “Well, what do you want to do now?”

And that’s when he knew that this evening was going to be great.

…

Two hours later, Stanley was not disappointed.

This had quickly turned into one of the best nights of his life. They’d had a condiment-balloon fight, committed several acts of minor vandalism, raided the place and, best of all, Dan’s friends had quickly forgotten that he was a kid and had no problem letting him join in. Well, most of Dan’s friends, at least. Daryl and Edwin had constructed a fort out of every box and can in the store and were sort of holed up in there at the moment, but at least they seemed to be having fun. He even had a pile of stuff that he was planning to take with him when he left tucked into the corner.

The merchandise had turned out to be as weird as the décor. They had things you would expect at most convenience stores – like snacks, toilet paper, lottery tickets, and assorted odds and ends people might have found useful a couple decades ago. But then they also sold stuff like 90s gangster accessories and cans of glow-in-the-dark spray paint (which absolutely made it into his looting pile).

The fact that they sold comic books by the register was expected. The contents were not. Stanley flipped through a couple and found them to be definitely not as family-friendly as what stores like this usually carried. The latest editions were from May, 1995

(A few of those made it into the pile too.)

Really, the only thing that would have made this better would have been Stanford getting with the program. He hadn’t been complaining, at least, but he hadn’t been joining in with them either. Instead he’d been off on his ‘ghost hunt’ - blowing the evening by just wandering around, looking at things, and scribbling into his notebook. He tried to pull Stanley away at one point, but that had been right when Greg had been in the middle of dumping a whole pack of Mintos into the biggest Pitt bottle they could find, so Stanley had been a bit busy. He wasn’t sure where his geek of a brother had wandered off to now.

The slushy machine even still somehow gave out valid slushies. It had need to run for a while before he could get anything but sugary liquid out of it (which he drank anyway), but after a little patience he had a jumbo-sized cup filled to the brim with a flavor called ‘atomic orange’.

The more he thought about it, the weirder it actually was to him that all of this was still here. With a clean the place might even be ready to open in the morning. The only thing missing was the cash in the register (he’d checked, and he couldn’t get the ATM open). It was all perfectly good merchandise – or at least, would have been perfectly good merchandise when the place closed. There were functioning appliances like the slushy machine or the display freezers that should have gotten scooped up by other business owners in town. Why hadn’t things been sold off by whoever managed to get dibs on the place? Why were they the first looters? He couldn’t imagine a simple ghost story being enough to keep all this valuable stuff here.

Well, whatever the reason, he certainly wasn’t complaining. More for him. 

Things were at a bit of a lull now. Most of them had gotten the initial excitement out of their systems and were all sort of taking a general snack break. Stanley was sitting with his back to the shelf, watching everyone that he could see from there, taking swigs out of his slushie. He’d decided to skip the straw and lid all together. It was more efficient that way. 

Greg and Janice were definitely an item. He could see them feeding each other twinkies. He was getting the same kind of vibe from Daryl and Edwin too. 

That thought made him pause. He’d had his fun. Maybe it was time for him to get back on track too

The store was small enough that it only took him a few minutes to find her. Carla was sitting with her back to the counter, looking through the magazines and comics there. She was holding one of the goriest ones that Stanley had found earlier. As he watched, she turned a page and recoiled a little, eyebrows going up. She quickly closed the comic and put it back on the rack.

The adrenaline rush from the night so far was enough for him to only need to give himself just a little mental pep-talk and a swig from his cup before he was ready to slide in next to her. 

“Hey, Carla,” he said. 

Then he gave her finger-guns and a wink, for some reason.

She jumped a little bit. She didn’t seem to have noticed him get close.

“Hey,” she said. “Uh, Stan…ley, right?”

She had answered him _and_ she knew his name. This was already going better than any other attempt he’d made with a girl before.

Okay, conversation topic. He had to come up with a conversation topic to keep this going. The flower, maybe. She liked flowers.

He gestured at it. “So, uh, you get a lot of bees with that, or…”

She opened her mouth. Then she closed it. 

“Um…not really,” she said.

Uh oh. This wasn’t working. Change the topic. Change the topic.

“Having a good time tonight?” his voice only came out _slightly_ squeaky.

She hesitated a bit, pulling her knees up to her chest. “I guess so,” she said. “My brother takes me to weird places like this a lot, so I’m sort of used to it.”

“Hey, sounds like a cool big brother,” Stanley said.

She just stared at him for a moment then. It might have just been his imagination, but her eyes looked a little…haunted.

“Yeah,” she said, her tone flat, “he’s great.”

“Come on,” he said, flinging his arms open wide. “This place’s got everything!”

Unfortunately, he had forgotten about the slushie in his hands when he did this. His lidless, still very full slushy.

Atomic Orange went raining down on her.

She jumped up with a shriek. The icy orange slush was running down her body from the section of hair that had been hanging over her shoulder to her shoes. He could see patches of reddening skin on her collarbone and legs as she started frantically trying to brush it off with her bare hands.

Panicked, Stanley started trying to brush it off her too. She smacked his hands away.

“H-hold on,” he stammered, “I’ll go get-”

He ran off without finishing his sentence.

After a couple minutes of searching he managed to find a jumbo pack of napkins. He tore open the pack, grabbed as many as he could manage in two hands, and went sprinting back.

She was nowhere in sight. Stanford and Janice were standing next to the slowly-spreading patch of orange, watching it. 

"Where'd she go?" he asked.

Stanford took the napkins from him and dropped them onto the puddle. “Bathroom. Her brother found the key and took her in to get cleaned up.”

Disheartened, Stanley stuffed his hands in his pockets and wandered off.

"Hey, can you go sulk _after_ you help clean this up?" Stanford called after him. Stanley didn't turn around. The store was abandoned - not like it had to be ready for opening tomorrow. What did it matter if they made a mess? He dropped down to the floor once he found himself tucked into a back corner somewhere. 

Maybe there was still hope. Maybe he could get her to laugh the whole thing off once she got out of the bathroom. Chances were though that he'd blown his shot and Greg was regretting bringing him along. 

Something rattled behind him when he flopped himself back. He looked up.

He noticed the nightmarish cartoon dogs decorating the sign before he saw the ‘Do Not Sell’ caution tape across the front. _Smile Dip_ , apparently. Interesting design choice, but free candy was free candy.

Well, he may as well start drowning his sorrows. 

He stuffed a few into his pocket for Grauntie Mabel before tearing one open.

…

It took a few minutes of searching for Stanford to find his twin. He was lying on the floor – covered in pink powder, pupils fully dilated, and with one leg weakly kicking up into the air.

Well, this just kept getting better and better. 

He knelt down next to him, making sure to watch out for the pathetically flailing foot. “Are you okay?”

The glazed over eyes turned to look at him. That was probably a good sign. 

Then Stanley mumbled something (the only thing he could sort of make out sounded like ‘footbot’), foamed pink out of his mouth a bit, and slumped back down. 

Stanford lost all optimism. 

His hands were orangish and unpleasantly sticky. The best he could hope for was that his brother was just having a sugar crash instead of being in the middle of a seizure. He was surrounded by strangers who seemed determined to commit as many acts of petty theft and vandalism as they could get away with. And to top it off, the investigation hadn’t really made any progress in a while. 

At least, it hadn’t made any progress since he had found the chalk outlines on the floor. 

Really though, even that only confirmed that there had actually been some deaths here. There was still no sign that the victims might be sticking around. The history alone might have been enough to keep him willing to stay if he had just come with Stanley, but the racket the teenagers was making was making it almost impossible

He was feeling pretty ready to go home.

The problem was, they had driven to get here and he didn’t know the way back. He was also pretty sure that he wouldn’t be able to get Stanley out of there without assistance now, and there was only one person there that had any actual obligation to them. 

It was easy enough to find him. He was sitting on top of one of the shelves, halfway through a tub of something labeled "Jerky Bitz" that Stanford sincerely hoped had enough preservatives to somehow miraculously still be safe to consume. Stanford steeled his nerves and made his way over. 

“Uh, Dan?” he called up. 

Dan gave a little jerk of his head towards the empty spot next to him. 

It took him a few minutes of struggle (during which Dan watched silently) before he actually managed to pull himself up. He let his legs hang down over the edge as he sat down.

Dan seemed to be waiting for him to speak. 

“So, um…” he began, “do you know how much longer we’re going to be here for?”

Dan shrugged. 

The lack of response made him cringe a little. As his own words sank in, it was occurring to Stanford that it had probably been a bit rude to ask, considering that Stanley had just invited them along to a gathering with Dan and his friends. 

He peeked up at him, trying to assess if he was annoyed. It didn’t look like it. He was just sitting there, watching his friends down below.

Come to think of it, had he ever really been able to identify that Dan was actually unhappy with them? Aside from (of course) that time Stanley had stolen the golf cart to save him from the gnomes, he didn’t think so.

Stanford rested his chin on his palm and gazed at Dan as revelation struck.

He had been interpreting a lot of Dan’s silences as tolerance. He had assumed that he was probably annoyed with the two interlopers into his summer, but had been trying to act civil towards them in spite of it. Maybe he’d been looking at this all wrong.

Was Greg right? Was Dan actually just _shy_?

It made sense when he thought about it. Dan didn’t talk to them all that much, but it didn’t seem like he had a problem with them. He could maybe explain away Dan helping him down from the fence as him not wanting to have to explain him getting hurt to Grauntie Mabel, but he could have just refused to let them come along in the first place.

Some people were just naturally very introverted, but that didn’t seem right either. Would someone who just didn’t feel like socializing actually get together with a group of friends and do something like this?

He was going to have to test this.

Come to think of it, Stanford hadn’t ever really tried initiating a conversation with Dan. This seemed like as good a time as any.

“I think Stanley ate something he shouldn’t have,” he said. 

Dan didn’t say anything just yet, but he did turn to look at him. Stanford kept talking.

“He got into this stuff called ‘Smile Dip’ over there,” he waved in the general direction, “and he’s not really coherent at the moment. Of course, he’s been eating things all night and I think he probably ingested his own weight in sugar even before he started in on that, but I’m pretty sure it was the Smile Dip that pushed him over. I think he’ll be okay – or at least, I hope he will. I think he’s got a good constitution, because he’s got a track record of being way too adventurous with stuff like this and he keeps pulling through somehow. I watched him eat half a corn dog he found on the beach once. He kept insisting that it was still good, but it was still one of the worst things that I have ever seen in my life.”

Well, that was certainly a conversation starter, at least. Now he just had to see if Dan was going to take the bait. 

There was a moment where Dan still wasn’t saying anything, and Stanford started to wonder if he had misread him after all. 

But then…

“Your aunt used to sell that stuff at the shop when I was a kid.”

Success. 

And also maybe a concerning revelation. But mostly, success.

“Really?”

“Yeah. I never tried it – my Ma would never let me – but she had it by the register for a while.”

Dan was actually looking at him as he spoke now. Partially hoping to keep it going and partially hoping to get answers about what was going on with his brother, Stanford asked, “Do you know why she stopped carrying it? I mean I know you didn’t work there then, but…”

Dan grabbed another handful of Jerky Bitz. “Not allowed anymore.”

Well that wasn’t reassuring. “Is it…illegal now?”

“Yeah,” Dan answered, still chewing. He swallowed. “But she had to stop before that. From what I heard, she ate a bunch one day, got a little…” Dan sort or wiggled his fingers near his head as he trailed off, “and Dipper just started taking any that made it in into the house after.”

If it had had the same sort of effects on Grauntie Mabel, then Stanford could understand why. At least he knew now though that overdosing wasn’t necessarily fatal. 

The conversation trailed off. Stanford stayed where he was. He knew now that Dan didn’t really mind his company. 

“You still doin’ okay?” Dan asked suddenly.

“Yeah, I’m okay,” he said. He meant it, which was odd. He had come over to talk to Dan so that he could leave, but that didn’t seem quite so urgent anymore. At the very least, he could stick around long enough to not ruin Dan’s evening.

There was a shriek. From his vantage point he could see that Daryl had gone down hard around the area that still had traces of orange slushy. Edwin was frantically trying to help him to his feet.

Stanford sighed. The napkins that Stanley had brought over weren’t the greatest quality, and he had spilled a ridiculously-sized cup. That whole area was really just a safety hazard now.

He hopped back down.

“I’m going to try to do something about that,” he told Dan, who nodded.

He headed in the direction that Stanley had come back with napkins from. Maybe there was paper towel back there too. A wet floor sign would be ideal, but that was probably locked in a supply closet.

It only took him a minute or so to find the bag. Stanley had practically torn it in half in his haste, and napkins were spilled out across the aisle. Stanford knelt down and started picking up some of them.

He registered the glow before anything else – the faint, reddish tinge that was suddenly on everything in his sight except for the space under his hand. Then the hissing, chattering sound coming from somewhere ahead of him. He felt the heat last.

Slowly, cautiously, he looked up. 

There, hovering in the air in front of him, was a skull. Not just any skull, either. It was a skull that was about five times bigger than a normal skull should be and wreathed in flames. Fire twisted around it, nestling in the empty eye sockets and between the clacking teeth.

The skeletal jaw unhinged, opening wide as it descended towards him.

Stanford tried to jump back and ended up tumbling backwards. The napkins dropped from his arms as he raised them up in front of his face and his eyes squeezed shut.

It took him a few seconds to process that nothing hit him. It was a few more seconds before he could bring himself to lower his arms and look. 

The skull was gone. The mess of napkins on the floor was the only sign that anything had happened there at all.

Well then. At least now he knew that this place was definitely haunted. Or he was hallucinating, but haunting was most likely given the circumstances.

He got to his feet. 11 years of habits brought him back to the place where he had left his brother. He hardly even looked at where he was headed on his way back, not wanting to take his eyes off of the place he’d seen the specter.

“Stanley,” he hissed. “Come take a look at-”

“Mrlfl,” said Stanley. Stanford looked at him. There was twice as much pink foam around his mouth now, and he had sort of managed to work himself into the fetal position.

“Oh,” said Stanford, straightening up, “right.”

Whatever episode Stanley was in the middle of aside, the situation had gotten serious. This place did have ghosts, and those ghosts were apparently hostile.

On one hand this was incredibly exciting and also actual proof that ghosts were real, but on the other, be hadn't come prepared. He hadn't even brought the journal with him. He hadn’t wanted to risk bring something that important along with a group of strangers. It was still sitting on his shelf back at the cottage, tucked into its fake cover. 

They should probably get out of there. Dan would take them home if he asked. 

His eyes drifted over to the door. And then he froze.

Something was wrong. He couldn’t even figure out what it was at first, but he knew something was wrong.

He remembered looking at the door as they had come in. He had noticed the open sign because it had still been flipped around, inviting them in. Like the place had been shut down so fast that no one had even bothered to change it.

The sign had been flipped around.

It was probably nothing. One of the teens might have done it for a joke. Still, something about it just wasn’t sitting right with him. 

Stanford made his way over and gave the door a tug. It stayed closed. 

With a rising sense of urgency, He went to reach his hand through the gap where Stanley had broken through. He was almost unsurprised when his hand hit an invisible wall. The place where he could see the jagged hole just felt like smooth, undisturbed glass.

The emergency exit wouldn’t open either.

He had to think. What was it that you were supposed to use to deal with ghosts? Iron, maybe? No, no, that was faeries. Silver? Silver mirrors. That was the main thing to trap them for exorcism. There was something else that started with an S too, but he couldn’t for the life of him remember what it was. Modern mirrors didn’t use silver, so he wasn’t going to find any here. He was pretty sure Grauntie Mabel had a little antique pocket mirror that might work. 

There was another payphone inside the store on the back wall. He managed to find most of what he needed to make a call in his pockets and dug the rest out of Stanley's. His brother twitched but made no move to stop him. 

Not a good sign.

(Stanley had more Smile Dip packets in there too. Stanford put them back on the display rack.)

He was one digit away from Mabel’s cellphone number when he put the phone back on the receiver. 

What would he even say? ‘I know it’s late, but there’s ghosts and we can’t get out, so come meet us at the abandoned convenience store we broke into?’ It sounded ridiculous even to him, and he had a feeling it might get Dan fired.. 

Clearly, there was only one way to go about this.

...

"Attention, everyone!" Stanford called, hands raised and standing on the counter. "We are all in grave danger!"

He got maybe a couple looks for his trouble.

A water balloon full of expired mustard bust near his feet and splashed his shoe. 

Dan, who had come down from the shelf and was leaning against the wall, seemed to be paying attention at least. He at least knew Stanford enough to recognize that this was unusual behavior for him. Janice was listening too - standing with her hands clasped in front of her and giving him a look of polite, expectant interest. Which was…good, he supposed.

“What’s this about grave danger?” Greg called from off to the side. His tone was too enthusiastic to suit the question. 

He had returned from the bathroom with his sister in tow. The red button-up that he’d had over top of his white t-shirt was on Carla now. The sleeves had needed to be rolled up several times to let her clenched hands poke through. Her dark-brown hair was tied back in a rough, damp-looking ponytail, her shoes and socks seemed to be in the plastic bag Greg was carrying, and her flower was looking somewhat wilted. 

The bit of her shorts that he could see poking out underneath the oversized shirt was stained orange. 

Stanford cleared his throat, not sure why it felt like things had gotten wildly off-topic. “As I was saying, it looks like this place is indeed haunted,”

There was a soft “oooh” from Janice’s direction. He chose to ignore it.

Dayrl and Edwin started making chicken noised.

“I thought we chose this place specifically _because_ it might be haunted,” said Shandra. “We discussed this.”

“No! It’s really haunted! Like-“ he sort of waved is hands around as he struggled to find the words, “ _bad_ haunted! We’re trapped! The door won’t open and I can’t go through the hole-”

They looked at each other, and Dan went over to the door to check. It came open with a quick tug, and then Dan let it go. Then he stuck his fingers through the hole in the glass. 

He looked back at Stanford and gave an almost apologetic shrug.

“Maybe the door was just too heavy for you,” said Shandra.

“It _wasn’t_ ,” he said, frustration rising.

The skull was gone. The door had really been the only piece of actual evidence that he’d had. And they were clearly not taking him seriously. It was good that they could get out now, but he still needed to them to come too.

Actually, no, there was one more thing that he could show them. 

“I can prove that someone actually died here, at least,” he said, climbing down from the counter.

Stanford led them around the counter. The three chalk outlines were still there at least, and he felt a little mollified by their gasps.

“Ooh, this must be where it happened!” Janice exclaimed. She dropped down onto her knees to take a closer look. “They died right here!”

There was a groan from behind them. Carla had curled up with her head on her knees. 

Greg walked over, bent down to her level, and tickled under her arm. “Oh, come on, little sis. Isn’t this exciting?”

She lifted her head a bit. Her hair parted just enough for Stanford to see her baleful glare. 

Greg beamed back at her. “That’s the spirit!”

“I’m telling mom,” she said.

Greg just messed up her hair and then came over to throw an arm around Stanford’s shoulders. “Hey, you’ve been holding out on us.”

“Do you want to lay down in it?” Janice asked Greg. “I can take your picture.”

Well, this had quickly backfired.

Okay, he should really be stopping this, he thought, watching Greg getting into position. He couldn’t think of any way that this _wouldn’t_ offend the entities that haunted this place. However, Stanford was also a budding paranormal scientist, and he couldn’t deny that part of him really wanted to see what would happen.

Also, Stanford didn’t like being patronized.

They weren’t listening to him anyway, he reasoned. They would probably do it no matter what he said.

…

Alright, so _maybe_ it would have been worth actually trying to stop Greg.

Stanford now found himself huddling inside the cabinet inside the overturned Pitt Cola dispenser, which was lying on what had used to be the ceiling.

Things had gone wrong almost faster than he had been able to process. Carla had vanished in a puff of smoke as she had scrambled back with a scream from the glowing chalk outline around her brother had still been screaming as she sprinted across the covers of the comic books at the counter, being chased by someone with a chainsaw. Then Stanley had come flying in with glowing eyes and a growling voice and the world had flipped upside down. 

Dan had saved him. Stanford had still been getting his bearings when the magazine rack had come flying in his direction. Dan had deflected it and sent the magazines bursting outwards with a single punch and stuffed him in here while they were still falling. He had the feeling now that the ghosts had lost track of him in the chaos. 

He had heard the others screaming, and then Greg and Shandra had stopped. 

Stanford peeked back out through the gap between the cabinet doors just to see Daryl disappearing from the arms of a sobbing Edwin. He couldn’t quite see where he went to, but from the horror on Dan’s face it wasn’t anywhere good.

He pulled himself back

 _The Guide to the Unexplained_ actually had a longer chapter on advice for extreme ghost cases for the average non-exorcist. Most of it boiled down to ‘get out as quickly as possible’. There was, however, some other advice for situations where running wasn’t an option. The _Guide_ talked about silver too, but he knew that there was still one other thing he was forgetting. He was sure there was something, because he remembered noticing that it was something that the Journal _didn’t_ talk about.

 _Watch and listen._ The Guide had said. _Look for the patterns and figure out what they want._

The Author of the journal had been insistent that ghosts always wanted something too. Stanford should have seen more that enough to get started with. He covered his ears to block out the crashes and screams.

Think. The ghosts went after Carla first. He wasn’t sure when they started possessing Stanley, but he knew it was still early on. The next event that he knew for sure was when they threw the magazine rack at him, but it was intercepted by Dan. Then they started picking off the others.

Carla, Stanley, and himself first. There weren’t a lot of consistencies in the way that the three of them had behaved tonight. Stanley was understandable, but if anything Carla should have been the safest. Even Stanford had been poking around, but she had hardly touched anything.

Stanford peeked out again. Dan was still doing okay. Well, he was still standing, at least. ‘Okay’ was maybe debatable. Whatever nerve he’d had when he had rescued Stanford was gone. Now he had his hair gripped in his fists and was breathing to the point of hyperventilation as he watched Edwin vanish too. But at least nothing had happened to him yet.

Dan was the only one they didn’t seem to care about. They had even let him open the door. Why?

It took several seconds of staring at Dan before it clicked. The only one they seemed uninterested in was the one that stood a head taller than anyone else and had just enough red stubble on his chin to need a shave. The one who looked like a professional lumberjack with his flannel and who probably couldn’t pass for his real age if he tried. He’d seen plenty of tourists get it wrong.

The ghosts didn’t like kids.

None of the teenagers besides Dan could be mistaken for an adult. There was Greg with his acne, Shandra with her scrunchie and cat sweater. Janice had a round face and Daryl and Edwin had spent the evening building forts and giggling with each other.

Then the rush of euphoria at the revelation began to fade, and reality set back in. Really, did this change anything? If the problem was that they didn’t like kids in their store, then Stanford trying to be the one to reason with them wasn’t going to do any good, and it didn’t seem like Dan was going to be up to the task. He had to find another way.

Whatever was possessing Stanley cackled in a voice that was definitely didn’t belong to Stanley. He could hear the sounds of it sending something else flying.

The crash shook the store. Through the gap, Stanford could see boxes tumbling off an overturned shelf. They hit the ground (ceiling?), and a burst of white powder spilled out around them.

And then, Stanford knew what he had been forgetting. 

_The Guide to the Unexplained_ had indeed talked about one more thing that the Journal hadn’t – salt. It wasn’t a permanent solution, but the chapter had claimed that ghosts couldn’t cross over it, and that sprinkling it over an entrance way would prevent them from passing until the line was broken. It wouldn’t be anywhere near as good a solution as the silver mirror, but as long as it worked in other contexts it was a far more accessible one at the moment.

It was just a matter of whether or not he had enough faith, or few enough options, to take the risk.

He took a deep breath, and then burst his way out of the cabinet.

“ _There you are,_ ” the deep voice coming from Stanley rumbled. Dan was yelling his name, but he didn’t let himself think about any of that. 

He didn’t have that far to go. His fist closed around the white crystals within seconds.

With no idea whether or not this was going to work, a rushing sound in his ears as something advanced on him, and eyes squeezed shut, he flung the salt out behind him. 

There was a keening sound, and then a thud. 

And then he was falling.

He opened his eyes as he hit the ground. Stanley was lying facedown next to him. Salt dusted his hair and spilled out of the folds in his shirt.

The others were back too. Carla was gasping and panting on his knees next to the graphic novel display. Janice had mustard in her hair. 

Three figures were writhing in the air above them. 20-somethings maybe – two men and a woman. They looked straight out of the 90s – hoop earrings, ball caps, gold accessories, the works. Their forms flickered, wavered. 

The woman was beginning to pull herself back together. One translucent hand jerkily came up to push the long, curly hair away from her face. The glare that she leveled at Stanford felt like ice in his veins.

He tore his eyes away from her and looked at everyone else. They were mostly just scattered on the floor, staring in stupification at the sight before them. 

“Get out of here!” he yelled.

That woke them up. In a rush, they all swarmed the door. Stanford started to try to drag Stanley out but Dan scooped him up first, making it out with him dangling from one arm. Stanford grabbed some of the salt boxes instead.

The door opened this time. Maybe _they_ still weren’t recovered enough to keep it closed.

Stanford didn’t know if they could leave the building or not, but it was better to be safe than sorry. Started fumbling with the salt boxes in his arms to try to get some in front of the doorway. 

He made the mistake of looking up as he did it. The woman was lunging towards the door after them, face twisted into a snarl. But he got the line down just in time, and she hit a barrier just like he had earlier.

“I need someone to take these and try to make a line around the building,” he said, tearing his eyes away from her and pouring more salt out on the ground. 

No one took them. The teenagers were all just staring dumbly at him – apparently a little to jarred from their experience to follow basic instructions.

He sighed, and was just resigning himself to a sprint when two of the boxes were snatched out of his arm. Carla took off running and returned wide-eyed, panting, and with the last few grains trickling out of the one box that was still in her hands in under a minute.

Now it was his turn to be a little stunned. 

“Uh…thanks,” he managed. He took the empty box from her.

Stanley was starting to come too. Dan set him back down.

“We have to go before they find a way to get out,” said Stanford, and for once, they all listened to him. The screeching and crashes coming from inside were really helping his argument.

They all piled back into the car. Stanford wound up in the middle again – in between a pale Carla and a green Stanley. He was too tired to worry too much about trying to keep Carla from seeing his hands this time, but she seemed to be too tired to care all that much. She did look at them, briefly, but then just went back to watching the streetlamps pass by out the window. 

“See?” Greg said to her, “Didn’t I tell you it was going to be exciting?”

She didn’t take her eyes off of the window. “I hate you.”

Greg just laughed.

…

Upon their arrival home, they discovered that their great-aunt and uncle were apparently just super into black and white period pieces about British nobility.

**Pdbeh wkh uhdo vxpphu dgyhqwxuh zdv wkh iulhqgv zh gxpshg lfb ehyhudjh rq dorqj wkh zdb.**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I decided to leave out the ghosts telling their story because I couldn’t quite make it fit with how I saw Stanford taking action here. He just wouldn’t see as much point in talking things through with the poltergeists as Dipper did, and ended up leaving things not quite settled. In his defense though, they wouldn’t have been that interested in talking to him, and no lamb costume would be cute enough to fix the situation. Dan was just too freaked out to do the talking for him.  
> Here’s the story:  
> Once upon a time in Gravity Falls, three friends called Jeffy Fresh, Byrone, and Rosie decided to go into business together. There was a need for a convenience store in the town at the time, so they went for a shop that they knew would be a money maker.  
> Still, they had a dream. They wanted to bring real culture to this dull little town, introducing the people to artwork from the big city, the latest hits in their favorite musical genre, graphic novels that weren’t just for little kids. And regardless of what the actual tastes of the locals actually were, it worked well enough. They all needed to pick up a loaf of bread or a bag of chips sometime, and if they had to listen to rebellious music to do it, then so be it.  
> The only problem was the young ones. The kids just didn’t understand the level of artistry that Jeffy Fresh, Byrone and Rosie were bringing to the community. Sometimes they would come in an make a mess. Sometimes they would fiddle with the posters, or even take one with them. But really, they were mostly just ruining the vibe. They would cry when they wanted candy. They would come in singing the itsy-bitsy spider or dragging toys along with them when they walked. And that was definitely not the right sort of vibe.  
> The final blow came when two tiny customers (in a moment of actually understanding the concept of graffiti better than the shop owners did) decided to add to the graffiti wall with their crayons themselves while they waited for their mothers to finish shopping one afternoon. They wanted to make it pretty. The sight of those smiley faces, flowers, and rainbows scribbled on next to their beautifully spray-painted flaming skull sent a terrible shock through Jeffy Fresh, Byrone, and Rosie.  
> They were struck down with one of the few documented cases of triple heart-attacks.
> 
> And yes, the two children that sent the store owners to their early grave were, in fact, a young Paul Duskerton and his friend, Martha.


End file.
